NORWAY – The Fare Share Commons, under the auspices of the Commons Arts Collective, will present The Art Doll Collaboration, a display of nine artist-made dolls, their accoutrements and journals that detail their evolution and tell their stories.
The show will open from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, June 6, and will run through June 28.
The project was initiated by Norway artist and teacher Nikki Millonzi. The artists who participated in the collaboration are Millonzi, Nantz Comyns of Scarborough, Don and Maya Best of Greenwood, Om Devi Reynolds of Casco, Donna Powers of Arundel, Jinni Millonzi and Sylvia Pinto-Pettit, both of Sun City, Ariz., and Diane Howey of Brandon, S.D.
In August 2002 each of the artists began work on a doll (the Bests collaborated on a single doll). Over the succeeding nine months, with each new moon, the dolls were sent along to the other artists in a round-robin for further creation, alteration and embellishment. The artists employed a variety of crafts, but the crafts traditionally associated with doll-making – whittling, sculpture and stitchery – still predominate.
The dolls journals, crafted objects in themselves, traveled along, and each has entries from all the artists including hand-written and hand-printed text, drawings, paintings and collages.
The results of the collaboration are highly unconventional as dolls go. Although the hands of particular artists can be seen across the group, each of the dolls is original and distinctive.
The figures include: a pair of (twin) hoose (part moose, part horse) with long, expressively attenuated stick legs; a finely-carved and jointed figure, faceless, with the robes and trappings of a mendicant monk; a beaded butterfly with sheer, sweeping wings on wire frames. Several of the dolls have a sculptural quality, while others were crafted with extreme delicacy in all their parts.
The Fare Share Commons operates as a year-round gallery with monthly openings.
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