Bad Kitty Art Studio Portland/Beaverton, Oregon - oil paintings, sculpture, painted furniture, recycled art, motivational words

Bad! Kitty Art Studio Quote for the day

Baagunnara (formal) -

Telugu: for how are you?

The quote above does not make me feel bad or good.

It just fit my mood for this freaking cold and crazy high wind day here in Sunny Oregon.

My body hurts, I have what Mate Man and I lovingly refer to as "the claw"

for hands this morning.

When I am older, and finacially stable

(that will happen someday right?

Yes Heather...there Is a Santa Clause

..."I do believe in fairies...

I do, I DO"! *from Peter Pan Movie*)

I will move to an even more mild temperate climate, somewhere where it's a little warmer most of the time...And little less cold and wet...I can handle the cold...sorta, I can handle the wet...Pretty ok...But mix them together...And I'm miserable.

So no fine detail work coming from these old claws today.

I may sit on a heating pad, with a blanket and hot chocolate all day...and work on Magic Art Doll #3..."Wild Child Sheds her skin"...I did some market research as far as pricing these little dolls of mine...the Machine of love #1 Joy...then yesterday's "Swimming upstream", and I find that art dolls are terribly under-rated as an art form.

I mean really...underrated.

So I'm going to make lots of them...the current trend seems to be that something this size and time to make...runs about 15.00 to 35.00 each...Depending on the area and "hot factor" of the artist.

And OMG! are they popular, like ATC's...I had no idea. Really...

because I don't like dolls...so I never paid attention to that part of the "art" world before...

when I was a kid, because I was a girl...People used to give me

"girl" gifts.

Dolls mostly and such stuff that goes with dolls.

I never liked them, I never wanted them, I had an old rag doll that was a little black girl with a flat face and braids with beads at the end, that had been given to me by one of my Father's "lovers" at the time...and she had a happy face and a little green jumper with white flowers on it.

I loved only that doll.

During a time when a little white girl ( I look white...),

walking around with a little black girl rag doll stuffed under her arm was just Not OK to do, the beginning of the PC movement.

I am not PC.

Never have been.

For example:

When I was 10 or so...I took the huge box of dolls that I had been given over the years...Out of my oversized closet...And then hung each one carefully on one of the largest walls in my bedroom, which was BIG.

I was on lock down restriction at the time, which meant I had been locked in my room, and had been there a couple of days...Let out for bathrooms breaks and meals...Sometimes...Depending on who my keeper was at the time...Mom or Dad.

Anyway...I hung them...carefully spacing them, on my newly re-decorated room wall...my Mom had spent tons of time and money with my Nana...re-doing my room...no one asked me what I wanted...they said isn't this such and such pretty?...and being that... I was well-bred, and well beaten..I always said "yes", that's nice.

So my room was all Victorian lace and four poster antiques...really quite nice, but I hated it anyway...just because.

Actually one of my best "good" memories that I have left in my mind about my Father was when we found that stupid antique Mahogany bed...And it had been painted black or something, at a flea market...he took out his pocket knife and scratched some of the paint off the back of the headboard...and saw that it was a fine wood...he bought it, and then we took it home and re-finished together....Working off all the paint...Rubbing, sanding and fixing it until it was incredible again...That was a good time.

Back to the doll story:

Each doll was perfectly placed...Hung by elastic stretching string, that I had harvested off the clothes of another doll with fancy outfits...Each doll had been altered in some small way...Hair cuts...slutty outfit changes...pin heads sticking out of their faces

(my idea of measles or chicken pox I can't remember)

but they were not gross or anything...in my mind anyway...just representational of how I felt...

I had to work with what I had...and in the "make-over" the walls in my room had been texturized...with sand or something...anyway they overdid it...and the walls were scratchy and rough and abrasive as Hell if you got thrown up against them.

I did get shoved around a lot...So this open wall space, studded with millions of tiny little sharp spiky things...Invited being pushed into, by the bullies in my home...

And so...I had a practical solution...

I thought...I would pad the wall...

With these stupid assed girly dolls they insisted

on giving me to prove how much of a

girly girl I was supposed to be.

Anyway, I only had so much material to work with...and I had to be creative... so to maximize the thread I had available to "hang" them from my thumbtacks...Each so carefully placed with each one measured out just so...

(Enter OCD here)

I figured out I could cover the wall with dolls...If I did it by hanging them from their necks.

It only took a little string for each of them that way.

I had it all finished in one afternoon.

I was proud of it. It looked cool.

My parents opened the door later that night, and took one look at my masterpiece of innovation and self protection...

And rushed me straight to the shrink.

They were sure that I was showing signs of mass murder tendencies, or some crazy shit.

I was just artistic and really smart.

That's all.

They took them down...I didn't care.

I got rid of the dolls...

and kept away from the walls as much as possible

for the rest of my time there.

And no one in the family ever bought me a doll again.

Mission accomplished.

I make dolls now...Not because I "like" dolls...I still don't like dolls. They are creepy to me...Like clowns...Are for some people.

But I don't make "dolls"...Never have.

what I make is more along the lines of the spirit dolls of the Native Races from around the world. Human Beings have been making dolls or Idols for some purpose or another since the dawn of mankind.

I make magic happen out of scraps...Other terrific artists out there use other things...There is some mind-freaking-blowing art going on in the world right now...Holy crap!

Check it out for yourself.

So anyway..I was thinking about my wall of dolls...And how for the four or five hours between finishing my first

"installation artwork"

I got to lay on the floor and look at it.

I felt brilliant...Like the reflection caught in the fresh morning dew...My imagination took flight...My spirit was given a wing...I survived because I could not be stopped...I never stopped re-working my surroundings for safety and self expression...

you can't take away my inner world, or surpress it.

Life always finds a way.

Like water finds it's source, and light penetrates the darkness of the void...my inner world creates.

That can't be taken away from me...

so me and my claws will go do what we can do...to keep letting her out...keep finding the muse and letting her use me

to create the world I want to live in....one moment at a time.

All The best to you today,

living in the magic, eternal moment...Claws and all,

Heather