Because of working on the little 7-inch figure of the boy with his arms up -- possibly crucified or possibly flying -- I’ve been on the hunt for my stash of polymer clay doll directions, both books and magazines. I haven’t found them all, but these two books by Susanna Oroyan turned up and I want to share some of the examples she presents. Be assured that though the figures are often fantastic, she gives enough useful and realistic advice for anyone with patience to figure out how to create in this art form that hovers between toys and art.
As you can see from the covers, these little figures can be fantastic and elaborate, cartoonish or fairytale, portraits or caricature. They are usually mixed-media, with real fabrics and artifacts or not. What most characterizes them is their ability to evoke emotion in the viewer. Something about changes in scale and proportion in a figure that remains recognizable touches something elemental in human emotion that makes us want to participate somehow in the “life” of that little figure. It’s more than finding it “cute.” More like empathy. Perhaps it energizes the “mirror cells” or “spindle cells” that have been discovered behind the forehead in humans and high primates and that is evidently a source of compassion and even love.
The importance of this quality is sharply meaningful to me because of family members with closed skull head injuries to the forehead. They are not unusual where I live -- it’s a physical, risky life -- and are multiplied by the thousands in war. The appeal of small figures includes animals: Bob loved them. Our early relationship formed around the creation of dioramas at an inch-to-a-foot scale for the Scriver Museum of Montana Wildlife. As a child he had a concussion to the temple (a drunk hit him with the butt of a rifle) that might have given him a particular sensitivity to such visions.
Some people use the same materials and this same genre to create decorative objects that have little charisma, but archeologists know that dolls with ceremonial significance and “tang” have existed as along as humans. We are made for dollies. A paper plate with two spots and an upward curve will make a baby smile in response. Even the little emoticons created by punctuation marks can convey feelings. No need for wiggling smiley faces in costume, though the impulse to use them is certainly related.
Years ago, David Powell (son of Ace Powell, fondly remembered Montana cowboy artist) told me that it was not his painting that paid the rent (though he’s a member of Cowboy Artists of America) but rather his dolls. He uses his secondary career as a tech adviser for movies to create authentic Native American dolls, about two feet tall. Just as there are “artist’s books” made as one-offs with high skills and vision, there are “artist’s dolls” of incredible impact, verging on sculpture. David’s figures sold for thousands of dollars. The first of the kind that I saw was by someone else, a woman, I think, at the CM Russell Museum art benefit auction. It was a mountain man and controversial, because no one could understand how they related to cowboy art, a little farther over on the representational-but-formulized continuum. What’s the difference between a “doll” with real fabric and a bronze cowboy painted in realistic colors?
These two books suggest methods and materials for creating the basic polymer clay dolls plus providing outstanding examples, some of which were made from paper pulp or even traditional porcelain, a medium that demands considerable skill and equipment, like a kiln capable of vitrolizing water-based clay of high quality. Oroyan offers armatures, steps in processing, but nothing about marketing of the finished product. She herself taught and lectured.
I was dismayed to discover that Susanna Oroyan is deceased (2007) and intrigued that she was born in Portland, OR, when I was three years old (1942), but across town from me. Her parents moved to Salem anyway, so I never bumped into her. She was a “professional” dollmaker, belonging to the National Institute of American Doll, and worked in cloth as well as clay. I suspect that, like me, she was introduced to the couturier dolls at MaryHill Museum on the Columbia River east of Portland.
This quote is from a memoriam on a blog called “thecoppermouse.blogspot.com. “Oroyan's art – close to 500 pieces in collections around the world, including the Musee des Jouets at the Louvre in Paris – was noted for whimsy and the avant-garde in figures. She is probably most known for her 60 piece one-of-a kind Mulliner Family series and, in later years, for the Empresses of the Universe series. ‘It was always the challenge of getting the idea engineered into a three dimensional reality. How does an Empress of the Universe get around? With built-in sails, some on abstract wind-sail contraptions, and one with a pogo stick.’"
Here’s the empress who traveled by sailing:
Besides balancing between defined art categories, the work balances between portraits from real life and inspired imagination, tipping back and forth. Here are some less fantastic figures portraying children in poignant ways.
This pair below shows how much care went into the construction of the figure under the clothing. Bob Scriver’s monuments of Lewis and Clark started out the same way, but continued with clay clothing while these figures switched to fabric for the costumes. Oroyan provides patterns for some clothing. Provide your own manual dexterity and ability to conceptualize. One needs an understanding of geometry to invent patterns.
There is something about a human figure with wings that really grips us. I’ve saved two videotapes of movies who play with the idea: “Michael” with John Travolta as an unlikely specimen and “City of Angels” offered a whole flotilla of the creatures who hung-out (where else) in the Los Angeles public library. It’s an immensely comforting image, even in Caravaggio’s version, which features his fav boy toy with dirty wings and his feet trampling culture. I saw that painting as a child and have never forgotten it, which may be creeping back into the little figure of mine. The human mind contains ideas and forces that are totally hidden deep in the darkness. Art is one way to call them out and name them, but what we formally call “art” is far more mysterious and morphing than any discipline or genre or category can capture.
The example below is very simple, but by supplying red wings, challenges cliche.
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