Sheesh! It's taken me a full week to announce the opening of our show at an honest-to-grandma art gallery... 43 art dolls by 17 artist members of TAODA - Texas Assoc. of Original Doll Artists. The gallery is in Somerville, about 60 miles NW of downtown Houston, near a popular lake in the touristy hill country. Ought to be lots of summer vacation traffic through there.
Since most art galleries are long on wall space and short on pedestals, we required at least two of the three entries allowed each artist to be wall-mounted dolls. We called the challenge "Out of the Box" but the gallery calls the show "Go Figure."
Nobody should be surprised at the variety of solutions to that challenge in the show, considering the range of styles of dollmakers in the group. The show as a whole is a seminar on what constitutes an art doll. Somebody asked me who juried the show. I was proud to say nobody did. Every doll entered was there, and every one of them deserved to be.
My pal Joyce Patterson took these photos of me with my dolls. They put Nimue in the window so you can see her from behind as well and her translucence really shows up. Don't worry, no direct sunlight, there's a deep awning over the sidewalk. Who'da thought deep red walls would actually enhance art rather than distract from it? Then add a black and white tiled floor set on the diagonal! The room is gorgeous empty!
We were thrilled that 8 members of Central Texas Art Doll Sculptors (CTADS) drove down from Austin to attend our opening. I expect we will have to go back to Somerville in a few months for the opening of a show of theirs. That's two Texas galleries we've sold on art dolls. Onward and upward!
