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.

new dolls coming!

 I have been working on new designs..... if you want to know more keep checking my shop on etsy...

I knew it! I did I really did!

 This quiz confirmed it for me! I always knew that I was different...heck look at the stuff I create. The Were You Abducted By Aliens Quiz  is fun. The link is at the bottom of this post. Let us know if you are in this select group.

Actually, I took the test and it said there was a 32% chance that I had been abducted at sometime in my past. It also said that if the aliens were to come back that I'd be one of the first picked up.

I was sure I was an alien when I was little. I have cerebral palsy and have limited use of my right hand and leg. I knew I was different, but my parents never really explained in detail what was wrong with me. So in my little 5 yr old way, I was left wondering about myself.
I've always known that I was adopted and I always thought it was cool. If I got teased about it at school, I always said..."My parents picked me over everyone else. Your parents got stuck with you!"

One of the things my Dad and I did every Saturday was watch The Three Stooges and Warner Bros.

cartoons together. This is how I found the answer to "Why am I different? problem. The cartoon ROCKET BYE BABY came on and there was Mot the little Martian baby who accidentally got switched with a human baby when Earth and Mars rotated very close one night. I mean it was so obvious to me then! I was a displaced Martian baby!

I was so happy with my new found identity and waited and waited and waited to turn green and grow a pair of cute little antenna.

YEAH, I know that it was not to be, but being me on a bad day leaves me feeling pretty alien still, but not in a good way. When I'm creating though, I'm Mott and the world is good.

Were you abducted?

Sewing Freeform Figures - Captured

The way I work can seem very involved. In this tutorial, I wanted

to share how I
made one of my favorite pieces, CAPTURED .

I've always loved the colors of the Egyptian Funerary Art and the textures and spiraling shapes in Gustave Klimt's work.

I've always done
sketches to
help me
plan my
sculptures,
but I have never let the drawings get too involved though. The fabrics and the sewing itself often dictated changes in the finished piece.

After I collected up different shades and textures of fabrics in the the Egyptian inspired colors , I chose the wires I wanted to use for the armatures.

I wanted the starfish to act as a base and it needed to hold the mermaid securely. Even though it was only 8 inches in diameter, I chose 14g galvanized steel wire for the basic framework because it was stiff enough to hold the shape I wanted. After making the basic shape, I wrapped the 14g with 22g wire.

This texturing of the armature made it easier to cover the wires with acrylic yarn. I used a buttonhole stitch for this step. The yarn covering made it easier to attach the strips of batting used to plump up the starfish's shape.

The mermaid may have been a smaller piece, but her construction was much more involved. The process was basically the same as the starfish, but I worked in layers on this figure. After setting up the armature, I covered her with batting and started sewing fabric on the tail.

Once I had a stable fabric base I used more pieces of batting to create breasts and the facial structure . More fabric was then whip stitched over top. On the head, the eyes were sewn on and the forehead, nose and chin were then shaped and sewn down.

On the torso, the breasts were formed by sewing batting around a marble and sewing it in place. Once they were covered with fabric, I continued the spiraling fabric shapes I started on the tail up the torso and over the breasts.

The final steps on the starfish were to secure the resin eye in
place, sew on an eyelid and embellish the entire surface with beads.

The mermaid's finishing touches were beading the hair and embellishing the torso with seed beads. Elastic trim was used to bind the mermaid in place.