Workshops

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

My Own Personal Santos: Part I


I hardly know where to begin in describing this project, but it really started with my friend Stephanie who had a spark of an idea. Gaelyn Lakin, a member of the Portland Art Collective, recently had a show at Guardino Gallery in Portland. The show included several Santos dolls Gaelyn had created. I was fortunate to see the show in person and I was almost breathless with the beauty of Gaelyn's dolls. Well, Gaelyn will be moving soon to California so Stephanie asked Gaelyn if she would be willing to teach a group of artists how to make her style of Santos dolls; Gaelyn agreed and Stephanie arranged for about eight of us to meet at the 100th Monkey Studio in Portland. On the appointed day, we arrived with our numerous supplies and enthusiastic spirits. Tory, another member of the PAC, had already been playing around with her dolls and had taken Gaelyn's process and embellished upon it -- I won't give away any secrets because things will be happening with the Santos dolls -- but I will say that we spent the first day designing personal heads for our dolls. All of this is probably much more than necessary to introduce our dolls, but I wanted to share a bit of the background for how these lovely creations came to be. Because the process is so involved, we weren't even close to being able to finish up in the five hours we had the studio, so stay tuned for My Own Personal Santos: Part II.










5 comments:

Sven Bonnichsen said...

Very lovely! I'm wondering what the heads are made of… Perhaps paperclay over a store-bought doll's head, baked to speed up drying, then a coat of some sort of Golden medium?

lynda Howells said...

as usual l am jealous of what you are involved with! you do look as though you are really enjoying yourselfxxl think l will have to move to the states!Haxxlynda

lynda Howells said...

amazing idea. I was also wondering what heads were made of? Just looked as if you were having so much fun...as usualxlynda

Dayna Collins said...

Thanks for comments and queries about the Santos dolls. I can't give away "too many" of the secrets because my friend Tory will be teaching the class at Art and Soul in Portland this fall!

lynda Howells said...

Hix understand ...oh how l wish l was in the states and could come and take the lesson. Your end results looked amazingxwell done as usualxlynda