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.
