Custom Art Doll Adventures in Two Countries
Making custom dolls can be very long adventures, I think extremely long for me to be honest. While this doll in particular has not broken my “record”, it has been quite the journey to see her from a little tuft of wool into the doll she is now.
It’s not just that the actual making process is long, with all the sculpting and supply procurement plus processing of the materials that go into their creation, it’s also that it’s a very psychological excavation full of emotional side quests.
Let me explain.
Take for example that my last post here was in July, from a custom doll I started in early Spring. Of course I published some her posts when she was already in the hands of her mother, so there was that. This was never my modus operandi. I always published the doll’s creation blogs before I even shipped them home…but life has been taken a really odd turn for me when it comes to writing.
I have two dolls that have been enjoying being in the arms of their new mothers already, and not a peep about them here on the blog, as of yet. Of course they were presented to their respective owners, all via emails and chats and they are in love with them and enjoying their wooly presence, but I have felt such a pang of…shame…to have left them without their posts here. I feel the dolls are sad with me. Do not be sad too, I will remedy that shortly.
Therefore I have been thinking a lot, why is that? When writing and publishing stories about the dolls was one of the most intrinsic parts of my creative process? Why has it fallen by the wayside? I have to be real with myself and confess that I’ve been under huge amounts of stress for the last two years but that thankfully I seem to be coming out of it now. To some degree.
Moving to Portugal was a 2-year ordeal and it seems to finally stand on its own two legs so at least there’s that. Traveling back and forth, with some supplies here, and some supplies back in Canada, while trying to live in both places, has been very, very disruptive.
Also, ten years ago I wasn’t doing half of the things I do now, so my workload has increased exponentially, but also the resources at my disposal and my skills to use them, so it’s not just the amount of work I have on my plate. I think this lack of writing was mainly a lot of fear due to stress, and while the connection with my dolls is very much alive, in the studio, in our daily chats as I work with them (and on them)…sitting here and writing it all for you felt somewhat disconnected from that flow. Like I was trying to protect the little studio warmth, the private doll chat and keep it to myself. Not let it dissipate. That fear again.
This must all sound very silly and most likely it is. But I have been thinking so much about this, about the journeys I take with the custom work I embark on, what they teach me, how I progress through them, the thoughts they arise, how they make me feel, and also acknowledging that the world is not ‘2012 doll blogs’ anymore. Not even remotely.
Perhaps that’s part of the lack of writings here as well. Yes, I make less dolls per year, so therefore there are less stories to write. But also, I’ve realized that keeping this journal is essential for me, for my well-being as a maker and as a dedicated history to my body of work.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve searched for my own articles, to link them in response to someone asking me a question…and then I fall down my own fig&me rabbit hole. Something I’ve been informed from dear readers or people who discover my work and feel called to write me an email.
I start reading my old little blogs, or longer stories about a certain doll, and I get lost in a dreamworld of my own making. Very decadent, yes. Also very simple because I wrote it all, I took the photos and made the dolls and I am instantly transported in time to the day I sat there, with those dolls near me, with a camera full of photos, ready to edit them and be shared with the world. I remember how they made me feel, when I sewed their clothes, how beautiful it was to see them being born out of the wool.
But it has also made me think, that now that there are less dolls being made every year, and also less readers perhaps due to lack of consistent output; and more of fig&me in other venues, like Instagram, Patreon and YouTube, does it really make sense to come and invest some of my finite energy in this corner of the world? Would that energy be best channeled to the actual work, like making more dolls or more videos, which seem to be a more direct and transformative way of sharing, not just for me but for those that follow my journey?
I won’t say I didn’t find it disheartening at the beginning to see so many dollmakers using AI to write captions and stories about their dolls, use a machine to let it describe their work, it did make me feel sad. Not because they got so much responses that it made me feel jealous, I’ve always felt it is a VERY good thing that dollmakers are seen and their work appreciated. I’ve championed many dollmakers over my creative journey and I have tried to be open to help them when I can.
But I thought, that the mere immediacy, ease and rapidness of choosing AI to write for you, is going to make writing less desirable. If a machine can do it for you, then people are no longer going to trust stories. They will be a dime a dozen. And I was right, all of a sudden, it was everywhere. Flowery descriptions, “thoughtful” storytelling that was vacuous, and yet, so much engagement. It made me question a lot the thought I put into writing about my dolls and photos, the notes I took when I had realizations during their making, the books I read that ellicited new dolls, the connection I had to my work and that intrinsic part of my process: writing from a deep place about my dolls. From a true place in my heart.
It made that little voice inside me that wanted to tell stories about her dolls…to retreat. To hide inside the relationship that only I can have with my dolls. To spend hours hand-sewing linen, instead of putting my thoughts here for you all to read. Not because I was vindictive, but because the sheer volume of “thoughtful” storytelling that I noticed on social media left me feeling completely against writing my own.
And then, something changed. Like it always happens to me, I can’t quite put my finger when or how it happened. I am not against using AI, I have been using a lot lately (I will tell you how further down below). But my aversion to reading about dolls from descriptions written by AI and seeing dollmakers use AI to showcase their work, vanished from my view. It’s like it’s invisible for me now. As soon as my eyes detect it, I see blurs, the words fade in the background and I don’t even notice it. My brain has learned to shut it off.
If I actually choose to consciously focus on it, knowing its AI-produced imagery and written words, there are no longer negative feelings in me anymore. It just produces nothing. No connection, no dissatisfaction, no sadness, not even pity for a “time gone by”. I just see what the maker in question or person using it is trying to convey and more often than not it falls completely flat on me. So I move on. Quickly scroll past.
I also understand that now more than ever it’s imperative to learn to use new technologies as it opens new frontiers of interacting in our vastly connected world. My brain has been trained now to notice it, and sometimes I can choose to read/watch it but there is an ‘alert’ signal. I can’t escape AI-produced content, nobody can. We shouldn’t try either, we just need to be able to discern it and take it for what it is: a machine has crafted at the behest of someone something that it has learned humans react to. And it can be used at scale, on you.
So, that brings me back to the very tactile, very real work of my own two hands. After feeling somewhat disconnected from this place, sensing the written word had been cheapened beyond recovery, I’ve also understood that the practice of writing here is transformative for me in many ways and I should not discontinue my path.
There may be less readers, or fewer people who can sit and read an entire blog story about a wool sculpted doll, but that has always been OK with me. After all, there are only so many dolls I can make, quantity has never been the aim. And acknowledging that using my brain to tell you the heart-borne realizations of dollmaking from my own experience, it’s very worth it.
If only because a few years from now I will happen about that same blog and fall down another rabbit hole. Talk about a circular enterprise!
So how have been using AI as of late you ask?
Mainly to update old videos in my YouTube channel. I thought the library I’ve worked hard to create for you requires a little freshen up and I can’t be bothered shooting new photos and writing the same description over and over. If anything, my time is better spent elsewhere: on new work.
So I ask the AI studio to redesign thumbnails, to update those videos and give them a coat of new paint. Changing some titles to updated text and including pertinent current information and links. All my current and new videos I always create everything from scratch: my own photos, my own editing, my own words.
I suspect I will continue to use it in ways that makes my work more efficient, especially with organizing this 13-year-old blog for an 18-year-old business.
There is so much that is in here (and in my old blog I had since 2008), buried under pages and pages, so much that could be updated with fresh information, many free tutorials I have published that are hiding in dusty corners and even classes I have discontinued that could benefit from some airing on a sunny day and be useful to new dollmakers.
But instead of me using my daily energy to dive back and retrieve them for you, I will use my energy to create new work, and let AI organize it all for us. Once I figure out how 🥰.
This beautiful doll is Hellebora June. She and I have had a beautiful time together and she is ready to head home to Belgium. But first, her introductions of course. She will come back soon to show you her very own gardening outfit and then her winter attire. So, stay tuned!
If you are a maker yourself and you’d like to read how I worked on her outfit, you can check out this: Exclusive Behind-The-Seams on Hellebora June.
