I Play With Dolls

A ghostly doll, assembled of bits and pieces, floats near a pine tree in the Ardeche forest.

And across the Atlantic my mother's much loved dolls assemble beneath the trees.

Le Palais Ideal

In 2007 I made a journey to the Palais Ideal, a place of dreams built by one man, a village postman in Hauterives, France, who collected intriguing stones on his rounds and using these finds, commenced in 1879 to build the hauntingly beautiful palace in his spare time. Ferdinand Cheval labored for thirty-three years to bring his palace to completion and it is truly one of the premier sites of visionary art in existence, a site beloved of the surrealists and Picasso, and a place of pilgrimage for many artists like myself. The Palais is so intricate and detailed that it is difficult to narrow down the selection of photos and since I would like to explore it in depth I may dedicate another post to the images --if you'd like to see more.

Urban Fae

I have begun to make a new series of miniature faery furniture for my Etsy shop, Pandora Jane. These pieces are part of the "Urban Fae" series and they combine my love of natural materials with the equally fascinating world of the found object (already an important part of my larger scale works).

"Lurking beneath the alley's spindly saplings or along the sidewalk where a dandelion breaks through concrete to mirror the sun, crouched at the edge of a pigeon's nest in the niche of a cathedral arch or among the window boxes on the 5th floor, they are the urban fae, those who have chosen to live in this most human of environments and offer subtle encouragement to the natural world. These fae can be a bit tricksy to deal with, although contrary to much popular belief they are not adversarial to humans. They do have a difficult role to fulfill and at times there have been incidents...
They are experts at blending human cast offs with materials from the urban natural world to create imaginative homes and furnishings. This chair represents a prime example. It combines the remnants of a blue enamel pan, broken crockery bits and a rusted bottle cap with twigs, mica, lichen and a duck feather from the city park. The throne measures 18 centimeters high to the tip of the feather x 5 cm. wide."

And another urban fae piece, a bottle cap, pottery shard and twig chair and tea table.