Dolls

Creepy dolls. Quite the obsession with some ceramic artists. Then today D got back from Cincy with five stuffed dolls that are eight feet tall with articulated arms and legs. They're hysterically patch-worked and beaded, clever writing all over them, completely stitched faces, odd headdresses. Next week he's getting more ceramic work, really good faces on odd bodies with the wrong appendages. It's going to be a difficult and interesting installation. The large stuffed ones are audience interactive and require multiple pulleys and lines. The first batch of creepy ceramics are fairly delicate. We need to repair one, damaged at its last venue. It's an interesting job. Went over to the pub for a beer, alone, after work, chatting up the help, all of whom I know well; and the new girl, Leslie, came in to work the evening. She's stunning, tall; long, fairly tangled hair, nice ankles. Jenny Richards came in, with a group, she's the Naturalist for the State Forest, a pert pixie and sexy as anything you ever saw in a Forest Service uniform. We talked about rattlesnakes, she's got two in her office right now, to be released tomorrow, and both of them, she said, were yellow rather than the usual black. Said it wasn't just a molting color, that some of the Timber Rattlers were just yellow. I tend to believe her, because she's kept the damned things. Gives me the creeps, really, there are a lot of snakes hereabouts. A wonderful fog on the way into work this morning, thin, hugging the draws, but a luminous blue in the morning light that was totally unexpected. We respond to color, sound, smell, shape, texture, in ways we can't predict. It's what makes art work. The unpredictable.