Madhuri Guin's enchanted dolls

 I just came across with Madhuri Guin's site and found the most amazing handmade dolls.

About Madhuri Guin:

"Madhuri was born in Hooghly, near Kolkata, India and completed her education from Jamshedpur (then in Bihar, now in Jharkhand, India) and Rourkela, in Odisha, India. Interested in fine art, right from childhood, she took up doll making at the age of 21 in 1973, when she felt inspired by the Shankar's International Doll's Museum in New Delhi, India.

Without any formal training in doll making or any other form of fine art, she began making simple cloth dolls with porcelain heads. Far from being perfect, they were the medium through which Madhuri taught herself and refined her doll making skills, to finally evolve a form unique to her.

Unlike most other cloth dolls made elsewhere in India, Madhuri's dolls were made to be more realistic. This was brought out by her unique doll making style. She made the face for the doll out of cloth, and used precise cloth patterns for limbs, fingers and the torso of the doll. These cloth patterns were sewed, stuffed with cotton and were provided with an iron wire frame. The fingers were sewed to the limbs, which then were sewed to the torso. The body was then provided accurate shapes, based on the kind of doll being made. The accuracy in gestures of the hand and body was provided because of the accurate cloth patterns used for the doll body parts and the special way the wire frame was assembled. However, the most striking feature of the doll remains the face of the doll." (keep reading at Madhuri's site and watch the dolls.)

 

Hyperrealistic Paper Sculptures of Everyday Objects

What some artists do with paper always astonishes me. This is Makiko Azakami that I just found here where more paper artists are exhibited.

"Makiko Azakami is a Japanese artist that uses paper as main material. She creates hyperrealistic sculptures of everyday objects by cutting and folding paper. Among her very accurate artworks we can see the reproduction of a Leica camera, a paintbrush, a pencil or a calculator. She manges to mislead the viewer with the precision of her creations."

I would never guess these are made of paper. At this page there are more but unfortunately Makiko's site is no longer online.

Art of coloured sand inside a glass

It requires a lot of patience to make such a beautiful scene made of coloured sand.
It's one layer after another with tiny little spaces where another colour creates a little shadow, a tiny bird, a moon, a bush...
Even though there is a lot of these work in Brazil I always like looking at the places they are sold.
Click on the numbers 1 or 2, to go to the blogs where there are more works of these artists.
Have a great week!

Meet Tootsie, the vegan artist, dancer and music therapist

"Tootsie is a vegan who used to live in New York. She runs drum therapy work shops to try and increase the power of women through expressive dance. She does a lot of voluntary work with the homeless and has a small apartment which doubles as a gallery for her own art work"

Isn't she lovely? I just found her at Mademoiselle Blythe's blog by Fanny Zara. It is a post about doll's hair made of alpaca and mohair.
Tootsie is a creation of Abgail and you can see more of her work in her Flickr's page.

Okiage dolls

There are some amazing pictures at  Kimonoboy's blog.
He explains:

"The Japanese word Okiage is divided into two parts: 1. oki, placing something and 2. age, building up or layering.

Okiage dolls were created by covering a thick layer of paper, which had been cut into the shape of a historic or legendary figure, with cotton padding then overlaying the design with brightly colored silk fabrics. The last step was for the craftsman to hand paint the doll's face in lovely detail. The end result was the finished upright Okiage doll representing a vibrant and dramatis personae, dressed in colorful high-quality silk fabrics with a three-dimensional appearance." (keep reading)

The picture is from Four Seasons in Japan: "Padded pictures of hina dolls, kabuki actors and characters from fairy tales used to be made in Mizusawa.

I wish I could see them because the pictures doesn't show the details.

"Just resting my eyes" by Karen Baker

I loved this doll and felt like sharing. Karen Baker has numerous great works.

I feel peaceful when I look at this picture that I even forget to pay attention on the craftsmanship. I could  talk about many things like how the time seems to... no. I'll just look and  feel.

A bathroom is not a bathroom, is not a bathroom, is not a bathroom

This is a photography by CEA and it's title is Coming Home.
It dazzles me in two ways: I look at each detail and think about the person who did it with care choosing the fabrics and creating the room piece by piece.
Then I look at the bathroom but it loses it's function and become a place of poetic appeal. I ask myself who lives there, the tiles... my mind keeps going.

Strawberries with a face

This is perfect! The right amount of cream to eat them and it brings color and fun to the table. I'll buy strawberries and do the same.
I know a woman who claims: "I don't eat meat, I don't eat anything with a face."
Do you think I should invite her?

I found this picture at a social network where people publish pictures without the credits.
If you know the author, please, leave a comment.

Dionne Warwick as a doll

It seems that Dionne Warwick us meditating about
The Windows the World or taking a deep breath.
by Dulce Tyler at Flickr.

Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary tantalizing introduction

I copied three paragraphs of Lewis Warsh's essay about Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. I think
that it can help those who have not read the book to know a little of what they are missing.
I hope it helps. Don't forget to search for the term "bovarism".

"Already disappointed with humanity by the age of twenty-two, Gustave Flaubert abandoned the outside world and retired as a hermit to his         

family's estate in the small town of Croisset, France. It was in            

this provincial Normandy setting that he created one of the world's         

great novels, Madame Bovary, and in which he spent most of his life         

almost mystically devoted to literature. Since he was deeply                

affected by stress and believed that a life of activity would damage        

the creative process, he wanted to shut the door, close off all             

distractions, and bury himself in work.  

                                   

"The writing of Madame Bovary dominated Flaubert's life from 1851          

to 1856. On completing the novel, he made no effort to publish it. But      

at his friends' insistence, he sent it to the prestigious Revue de          

Paris, which published Madame Bovary in installments in 1857.
The editors suggested he cut certain "offensive" passages, but the              

author refused. He might have reacted differently if he had known what      

lay ahead. Both Flaubert and his publishers were thrown into court          

on grounds that the novel was morally and religiously offensive to the      

public. Ironically, when the defendants won their case, Madame              

Bovary became a national best-seller." 

                                      

  The book was also recognized as marking a turning point in the            

history of the novel. The combination of realistic detail, objective        

narrative technique, harmony of structure, and language chosen to           

reflect the characters' personalities created a realistic, yet              

beautiful, picture for the reader. Drawing on both the Romantic             

emphasis on inner feelings and the Realist's concern for truth, Madame      

Bovary serves as a bridge between Romanticism and the modern novel."

Madame Bovary had two lovers:


"She repeated, 'I have a lover! a lover!' delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to her. So at last she was to know those joys of love, that fever of happiness of which she had despaired! She was entering upon a marvelous world where all would be passion, ecstasy, delirium."
read the book...
Image: Madame Bovary' book clutch by Olympia le tan

Kookoo's enchanted dolls

"The first one is Flora: "Meet Flora. In Roman mythology Flora (from latin floris = flower) is a goddess of flowers, flowering plants, especially those that bear fruit and the season of spring. Her function is to make the grain, vegetables and trees bloom. That is why I dressed her in crocheted dress in blooming pink and purple colors and even gave her hair a feeling of a growing tree".

The second, blonde hair,is Zoe. The third with the colored dress is Lisa: "Meet Elizabeth (or Lisa, as her friends call her, or Isabelle, as her grand-mère from France names her). She is a playful girl who loves colors and enjoys painting the most beautiful moments of our lives. Her desk is covered with brushes, pencils, crayons and a multitude of unfinished paintings, since she often rushes from one idea to another and forgets what she was doing in the first place."

The doll in white: The Bride:

"You really shouldn't say "I love you" unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget. ~ Author unknown, attributed to an 8-year-old named Jessica" These are the descriptions Kookoo at Kookoocraft did about her dolls. I felt sharing these two girls created by Kookoo. They are adorable. There is another one here.

Knitting and embroidering famous painting masterpieces

The group "The Materialistics" based in UK have recreated 50 masterpieces that enchanted the world. Works of famous artists like Kandinsky, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Andy Warhol, Vermeer, Piet Mondrian, Rossetti, Klimt, Picasso, Munch were redone through knitting, embroidery and crochet and started being exhibited last November at The Customs House in South Shields, has been presented in other cities and is gaining international recognition.

They name the creations based on the original title so "The Scream" by Munch is turned into "The Seam"; "Girl with Pearl earring by Vermeer" recreated becomes " Girl with the Purled Earring" and so on.

Some of the recreations are done in weeks but others can take months.

Executive director Ray Spencer said: “Our work with The Materialistics stems from our belief art should be inclusive, not elitist."

I don't know how to knit

I came across with this picture of a girl knitting her sweater at Hyena in Petticoats a while ago and today I wanted to share it. I think this is an amazing picture. The way the girl stares at us and the way her body is positioned says "I'm embarrassed. I have to finish it quickly."

The left picture is at Distance Knitting and I loved this colors and different patterns and textures. Even thou grandma tried many times to teach me I don't know how to knit. It's great that other people do!

Still women prefer spending a huge amount of money in any item that has a label with letters or symbols of a glamorous brand than buying something handmade that is exclusive and very well done.

Usually handmade clothes cost nothing compared to the famous brands.

Handmade dolls will last forever

I know I was supposed to post the J.Wright of Derby painting but I just came across with these dolls and couldn't help sharing.

Right: This is a collection of molded heads covered with felt and here there are thirty of them. Difficult to choose one.

Left: Steampunk doll. Confused? Here is the explanation:

Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, which involves an era or world where steam power is still widely used — usually the 19th century and often Victorian era Britain. Works of steampunk often feature anachronistic technology or futuristic innovations as Victorians may have envisioned them; in other words, based on a Victorian perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, art, etc.

Keep reading about the doll. I think that there is something magic about handmade dolls that will always enchant us.

The poet, the thinker and the craftsman

The first line of a poem of a eighteen century poet, let's call him John, is "A thing of beauty is a joy forever". One of his contemporaries was a thinker, let's call him Arthur, who claimed that life is tedious and a great way to escape this boredom is by arts. I like them both and in my life arts is one of my passion. But I also believe we can see beauty in many places like the craftsmanship of crystal blowing that transforms glowing balls of molten crystal into a shape.