Brilliance and Beauty

When I was in fifth grade, I ordered a wonderful book from Scholastic Books.  Now when I was in school from 1966 to 1978 disabled kids were shunted off to special programs or schools or warehoused.  My cerebral palsy is minor so I went to regular school, which was

good and bad.

I got a good education in 2 areas, physically normal people are often assholes to people who are different and most importantly a good education that prepared me for college. My Dad always said "It's better to out run idiots mentally." But this brings me back to why this book was also a turning point for me.r

Not being around other disabled people made it difficult to judge the extent of my impairment and I missed out on seeing other disabled folks work a rounds to compensate for the parts of their bodies that worked differently. Reading about Charles Proteus Steinmetz helped me visualize a different disability and how another person handled it. I went from The Man Who Tamed Lightening to books on Helen Keller, Louis Braille, Clara Barton, Florence Nightingale (The Lady With The Lamp....I loved that one) and Follow My Leader... A book about a boy my age who lost his sight in an accident.

So, without Steinmetz I might have been a scared kid forever. I love science, biology especially, but excel in art. I will always use anatomy etc to design my dolls, so he helped make me a better artist and a stronger person.

He was probably the start of my ideas on relative beauty too. Within the parameters of being a hunchbacked little person with dwarfism and hip dysplasia,  He's  not a bad looking man.
As I work on each new doll in my Uniques series, I think fondly of Steinmetz. I'm working on a doll with interchangeable arms and one with microcephaly. I watched Freaks again recently and the 2 girls and Schlitzie motivated me.


What books or films have inspired you?

Blind Angel

When most people think about human perfection and beauty a perfect body is what many people imagine. I don't have such a narrow definition. I never have had that idea for many reasons.

I have cerebral palsy and with the partial paralysis of my right arm and leg, I'm far from physically perfect. So, I have spent my whole life listening to..." What's wrong with your hand/ leg; Why do you walk like that?; Are you retarded?"

And I'm as far as I'm concerned barely disabled. If my CP more severe, I can only imagine the extra crap I'd have to put up with in public.

So I think of perfection or beauty differently.  I look like what a person with my type of CP looks like. A person with spinal atrophy, blindness, Downs Syndrome, severe burns etc all look a certain way. And whether you believe it or not, like it or not they are beautiful not in spite of their body, but because of it.  

I've been thinking about my ideas on relative beauty for a long time and how it could relate to what kind of art I create. My first steps into this realm were my animal pieces like my Hexcats who only have one eye because according to their backstory they were magicked by a wizard who was trying to save injured, abandoned and sick animals.  Since people sometimes tend to give more compassion to animals than other humans, these pieces have been successful.

Now I've decided to start adding unusual and physically different art dolls to my shop. Armaita is the first because she introduced herself to me as a figure in a dream.
This dream was about a heated conversation between a human woman and an angel.  As she spoke with the angel, Armaita, the woman realized the angel wasn't looking directly
 at her because the angel's eyes were a pearly white and sightless. 
The woman stepped back angrily and asked, " Why aren't you sighted? Shouldn't angels be perfect? The angel smiled, " We are created with the physical body we need to teach and learn. One doesn't need sight to see a soul. Come with me. We need to have a talk." 

So now I need to continue this conversation with you through my dolls. I hope we both learn about beauty and perfection together.