Tag Archives: america

craft, Doll, Uncategorized

Airbrush resistance: Art School

I was resistant to getting an airbrush because I had an attitude about airbrushes.

That attitude comes from my “foundation year”(fancy term for freshman year) at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and the general disregard held for airbrushes there.

Not that some students didn’t have them and use them. This was never more obvious than on Halloween when some lazy art dudes who hadn’t given thought to their costumes (art school Halloween costumes are serious business) would go over to an airbrush-having student (usually “Sham” and his roomie) before the parties and get their torsos and faces sprayed to resemble skeletons: pathetic, half-dressed, slacker skeletons ready to get sloppy drunk. That’s what I think of when I think airbrushes, drunk skeletons who couldn’t be bothered.

It would take a few years before we would all come together against a common Halloween enemy: Don and his damned Edward Scissorhands costume. Sure, it was great….the first year…but the way he’d use it to win Milwaukee bar costume contests every damned year for the next four years wasn’t.

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We were sick of that costume and sick of him.

He was a wanker. He’d eventually become an official Utilikilt vender for the North Pacific and move to Portland to sculpt and weld things and claim he’d always been named Gustav Sculptor.

Airbrushes though…

I had a buddy who worked at a Milwaukee’s Grand Avenue Mall t-shirt kiosk our first year at MIAD. He had flashbacks when I recently mentioned online I was looking at airbrushes.

We didn’t have dorms. We all just lived in downtown Milwaukee. Just responsible freshmen art students in apartments with leases, what could go wrong?  (so much) The following year the school had dorms but by then no one wanted to give up the freedom …except Don, because being a RA to young impressionable incoming freshman was his kinda thing…wanker

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My airbrush working buddy had an apartment with a bunch of other art student dudes who discussed which Young Ones archetype they fit. It was an apartment complex full of similarly filled apartments. The Apartment complex itself was named after Alexander Comstock who would not have approved of the shenanigans within. Airbrush Buddy and Co’s  apartment was a place with nasty but loved couches where you’d find yourself sitting in the evening drinking beer, watching STNG, and not doing your art homework.

One of his roommates also worked in the airbrush-shirt kiosk. I remember them complaining about the pushback they’d get from refusing to do gang symbols and the customers who would demand that they make the already painted bunnies cuter…or that the example t-shirt had seven purple balloons in the bunny’s hand and theirs only had six and was this a rip off or what?!? (Drink)

Sweet Baby Stevus, when looking for a picture of the Comstock I found listings that included pictures of the interior and I swear to god the kitchen fixtures ( and fillings ) haven’t changed since 1994. The only thing missing is there is no keg in this picture.

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So, prior to dolls, airbrushes were a source of contempt and stress in my mind: Drunk slacker skulls and bunnies that were never cute enough.

Then I learned that airbrushes are pretty much the best way to change the color of a doll’s body and head and I started looking at them, casually.

Hey, hey baby.

This year, facing the stress maybe changing jobs, I started looking again at them…

I didn’t get the job I wanted. Again. I got a letter telling me “you’re not our first choice but if anyone drops you’re on our waitlist”…which is why I simultaneously tell people not to panic about Covid-19 while also privately hoping whatever applicants got that job freak out about it and flee the country before the next school year starts

l’d been eyeing airbrushes on Mercari, hoping to buy one as an “I got the job” me-gift . I instead bought one as a “Nope, didn’t get it” gift…and shortly after declared this the YEAR OF DOLLS OR ART.

In fact I got a whole bunch of stuff all from one seller.

Tamiya spray booth, two Tamiya/Procon boy airbrushes, a MR. LINEAR L3compressor, that little moisture regulator, stands, and things to attach things and spray them and rotate them with, original instructions (Japanese) all at once for under 200usd which has turned out to be a great deal.

And then I had to wait to play with them for a week and a half while prepping for studio stuff.

This gave me time to watch airbrush videos…and time to get over the culture shock of watching airbrush videos.

I’m so accustomed to doll videos: lilting female voices (sometimes with Eastern European accents), colorful, time lapse photography and calming background music, well edited and containing helpful voice overs when needed.

Airbrush: Dudes who still used the term NOOBS, heavy metal font, sometimes barebones video editing and a lot of ambient sounds.

They’re just so much more aggressive. I don’t think I’m used to men telling me how to do things as much as I used to be…I bellydance, work in an elementary school where all the head teachers and principals are women, and I do a lot of traditionally female DIY craft.

With the studio show over I’ve had time to play a bit. As some of what I need an airbrush for is matching and changing skin tones, I’ll often be best off mixing acrylic colors and thinning them instead of using fume-laden lacquers.

with acrylics I’ve painted the ears I made for a 17inch Clawdeen Wolf ages ago (to become a taller Starfire) the seam in front will be further hidden under her hair

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I know I’ll have to sit down and do some practicing lines and hand-eye co-ordination at some point…although most of the time I’ll be just turning something a different color. I think.

I also cleaned up a Pullip in progress, this time with Mr. Hobby Acrylic Laquers. I’m making a Pris from Bladerunner and doing her face in chalk pastels resulted in too much pigment fallout, it got muddy, so I removed all my work and hit it with the airbrush last night. Tonight I’m layering it with Mr.Super Clear so I can add details.

And that’s how I’m currently learning to love my airbrush and leave the bunnies and skeletons (and wankers) behind.

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craft, Doll, Social

I Slump in Sadness

I visited America for two weeks this summer, hitting Maryland/Virginia/Pennsylvania for the first time in 18+ years.

I don’t have a car in Japan. I don’t need or want one here. I only drive in America. Usually I visit my hometown, where I can borrow a car. I’ve also visited cities with good enough transportation options and friends….but this trip I needed to rent a car.

How I got to this age never renting a car, I don’t know. I asked for advice and was told “reserve the smallest possible car. They will try to up-sell you once you’re in front of them. Often they won’t even have that car, it’s just to lure you in…but keep saying you want that car. You’ll generally get a nicer/larger car for the same price if you don’t back down.

Well, that’s what I did. I also requested GPS because I ready don’t need to make my once-a-year skill use more complicated.

My friend Brad took me to the car rental office my first full day in America. The man behind the desk was a sweetie and liked my homemade skull dress. He said he could go locate a GPS system for the car I asked for (a clip-in one) or rent me a larger car with one built-in for the same price.

This is how I came to be driving a Cadillac Escalade. A HUGE fucking car. HUGE.

Brad was kind enough to take a test ride with me to a Denny’s first. I was yelling “omfg this is low key terrifying!!!!” most of the way. Brad helped me figure out all the extras the car had to make driving A HUGE FUCKING CAR easier (more sensors, things that light up when someone is in your blind spot, that kinda thing).

After that all my major drives to different cities became a GPS navigation to all Tuesday Morning stops between Point A to Point B.

I didn’t know what a Tuesday Morning store was when I bought my first used Pullip doll. Through YouTube Pullip Education sessions I soon learned that these odd stores occasionally have random Pullip dolls for 40-50usd….when they normally go for 100-200 new.

Now, that’s I all I knew. My first trip to a Tuesday Morning earlier this year, in my hometown, was creepy and I found no Pullips. Tuesday Morning is an “off-price retailer for close out merchandise” a grab bag of furniture, home goods, and a handful of random toys. You never know what you’re going to get.

I did find four different full sized Pullip/Dal/Tayangs on this trip but nothing grabbed me. I now have regrets. In fact the regret set in when I learned how expensive downtown Philadelphia parking was but by then I was at the end of my trip and far away from the Tuesday Mornings that I’d found treasure at.

I did buy one Mini-Pullip. I’ll rebody her in the future.

I was well into my habit of googling “Tuesday Morning near me” before any long drive by the time Rook and I went to pick Emily up from the Philadelphia airport. I informed Emily and Rook that our drive to where we were staying WOULD involve one Tuesday Morning stop on the way and that was non-negotiable. I then explained the above reasons.

This was how Emily found herself, a woman once afraid of dolls, buying toys.

Our first Tuesday Morning DID have a Taeyang I now regret not buying…but we didn’t leave empty handed.

First of all I took this photo. Y’all know Hippos are deadly, right? The Little People know.

Then I saw Tristesse.

I’m very upfront about being a depressive with anxiety issues who avails herself to prescription medication to stay moving forward. I have a special love for Sadness from Inside Out (Japanese title: Inside Head). The last Elementary school I worked at has a large poster of the character I painted for the English room. They also have a poster I painted of Bianca del Rio.

I had to have Sadness. Her action? Slumping in Sadness.

Relatable.

She was only 6$ or so. In part because the batteries inside her own head were now dead and when you pressed her slump button she only made a bug-like clicking noise.

I bought her and a Monster High doll to be customized later.

Emily bought a Stieff Dinosaur, a Malificent, and some assorted bugs.

Here we are feeding Tastykakes to our toys in bed.

Here is Sadness trying to blend in. Relatable content.

But I’m never content to leave well enough alone. When I returned to Japan I figured out how to remove Sadness’s hair, unscrew her headplate, and replace her batteries. She now moans and says things like “Goodbye, friendship, Hello, loneliness” “I don’t think that will work” and “I’mSad” in English.

Then there was the matter of her sweater. It’s sweatshirt fabric seamed in many places and kept flipping awkwardly and showing the seams.

So I knit her a sweater from leftover yarn. It was the first time in a long time I knit without a pattern. She also tried on a beretthat one of my other dolls had been wearing.

I’ve since gone on a felt beret spree, making berets with exposed seams and enclosed seams. I figured she needed a proper blue beret for her active slumping.

The Sadness figure comes with a fake book. My next plans are to cover that fake book with a Sartre cover and sew a tote bag for her book. Maybe I’ll even make some tiny medicine blister packs to slip into the tote with her reading.

After all, Sadness relies on a the Inside Out team to balance her out…and I rely on modern medicine to be able to better access my full emotional range, despite sadness always being an integral part of who I am.

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craft, Doll, pullip, sewing, Uncategorized

Emily’s Doll: Will a doll help?

I haven’t written for a while but I sure as hell have been making things.

You see, my friends and I were hit with not one but two sociopaths this summer. We didn’t know about #summerofscammers until after the devastation. We’re petitioning that if there is a destructive human force NEXT summer that someone send us the hashtag memo earlier.

One total fucking horrible person is in my hometown and we’re awaiting his trial. I won’t get into details because they suck. Suffice to say these both came to a head within four days of each other in late May.What happened in my hometown affected many people, some of whom I will never meet, many of whom I know…and my friend Emily.

And, honest to fucking god, I asked myself: is there a doll I can make to help?

I meant it jokingly. As in “What the fuck can I even do in the face of this? I customize dolls. ”

In reality I’m coming to know what skills I can provide in these times: listening skills, trying to hold space for people’s feelings, gathering/sharing information and networking friends. I’m also learning some of my limits after the fact…I’m glad I had friends there for me at the times this summer that I broke down.

I, secretly, started making Emily a doll.

My hands need things to do. I need to be creating objects. It counter balances so much of the mental and physical energy I expend even in smooth times. When things get crazy, less essential ways of coping…like writing this blog…fall away but I still need to be making things.

I had a doll. I’d purchased it at Dollyteria in Ikebukuro on my birthday in April. It was naked, in a baggie, had already once been repainted, and needed a new body.  You know I have extra bodies and dolls just laying around in my craft room.

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I neglected to take a full body shot because sometimes when I need to make things I don’t slow down and document it all.  I NEEDED to make this.

I spent a LOT of time feeling like Emily’s stalker. Looking at her Facebook photos over many years. REALLY LOOKING AT THEM. HI, EMILY CAN YOU FEEL ME STARING AT YOU?

 

 

 

Her make-up routine is generally very dramatic dark eyes with winged liner and a fairly light lip. Emily often has a pink of light blue/green hair streak. There was NO WAY I was going to try and transfer all her tattoos.

I went wig shopping online at Dollyteria again and found a black/pink wig that would work.

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I removed the existing face with rubbing alcohol/ paint thinner. Then I primed it and set to work. I added some blush with chalk pastels. Set that. Then started the layers of watercolor pencils, acrylic, and more chalk pastels.

 

 

 

 

You probably noticed Emily’s eyes. If you don’t get those right you don’t have an Emily doll. I found a good match at BeBeBlytheCo on Etsy and ordered them.

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Almost finished. Later I cleaned up the inner eye

By this time I also had planned a two-week trip to America in mid to late August. I haven’t been to see friends on the East coast in…um…18 years. I’d see friends in a few different cities and then Emily and I would meet up in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is neither my home town nor hers…we wanted a city so we could just be someplace together and hang out. Talk about things that needed to be talked about when they came up and just have fun when it was time to just have fun.

I had a deadline. I wanted to surprise her with the doll in America when I saw her.

That left the problem of clothing.

Emily’s aethetic is deeply Victorian Gothic….but it’s not how she dresses in daily life. She’s also been very rockabily styled but those items haven’t been in rotation for a while. Comfortable jeans and a pullover hoodie didn’t really suit the doll I was making.

I started looking turning to Gothic Victorian styled dolls, Tim Burton, and Helena Bonham Carter for inspiration. I talked to my friend Ebony about it as well. Ebony’s also heavily goth inspired and has come to know Emily a bit through me and FB. Ebony suggested I add Penny Dreadful to my inspiration files.

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Fun Fact: I promptly watched the WHOLE three seasons while working on the doll. This means I’ve seen one episode more than Emily. Emily has, in a desire for the story not to end, abstained from watching the final episode.

Bonus; Penny Dreadful has a whole DOLL thing going on in the third season. I was on the RIGHT TRACK.

I visited Shinjuku Okadaya (fabric and trims) for some fabrics…I still not was sure on what I would make. I also had a small supply of Ebony’s “spoooooky fabric scraps”.

At some point during all of this Emily and I had one of many a video chat session. At some point she had to turn off her camera to answer a call and I put one of my many dolls in front of the video screen to greet her when she returned. This lead to a tour of some of my dolls.  The last time I saw her in person she’d been intensely curious about the dolls and when she got video introductions to some of them she was quite excited about their existance and my art…knowing nothing of the fact she’d be getting one. Another sign I was on the RIGHT TRACK.

Fun Fact: Emily used to be afraid of dolls.

I tried to draft my own doll corset but I soon found the deadline to America coming up too soon. I turned to my doll clothing pattern books. I have a fair collection now because JAPAN. I decided I’d modify the “Autumn” dress for my needs.

 

 

First up was the skirt. I love layering fabrics to make simple textiles look more lush. The skirt is a Halloween fabric layered over burgundy/wine silk. Spiders became my animal motif not unlike Vannesa in Penny Dreadful has scorpions as a leitmotif. I used an Obitsu body for her new body (her old body had floppy arms)

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Then the top:

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Her shoulders seemed bare so I found a free knitting pattern for a cobweb shawl for Blythe and made two. One for Emily and one for another doll of mine.

I decided she needed earrings. I asked Ebony if I could raid her stash knowing FULL WELL she stocks up on Halloween earrings and charms. Ebony came through when I visited her. The doll’s earrings are: Spider studs I added chains and web and cross charms to…all from Ebony’s stash.

 

But wait…there’s more!

 

I could have stopped but I decided to make a veil…

 

Which she can exchange for her clip on fascinator (which can also be clipped into the hair of her owner)…and I put a tiny spider clasp on the cloak.

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She then was carefully wrapped and placed into a wooden wine box I’d also been given by Ebony. When I arrived in America I swapped the fleece wrapping fabric I’d used for some halloween fabric I bought at JoAnne’s

On August 25th my friend Rook (who I’ve made a doll for before) and I picked up Emily at the airport in Philedelphia. We went back to were we were staying (after a stop in which we actually bought more dolls…more on that later) and I told her I had a gift for her.

She had NO clue, the long wooden box did not tip her off.

She cried with joy as she cradled it.

Will a doll help? Sometimes.

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craft, Mary Frances sewing

Ralph

Who Benefits from all of this doll clothing?

Ralph Waldo does.

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Meet Ralph Waldo Le Mutt, I’ve known him since I was in elementary school.

He’s not named after that Ralph Waldo. He’s named after a real-life dog named after that Ralph Waldo. 

Ralph, the real-life dog, was as dumb as the rocks he sometimes ate. He was a golden lab owned by Marsha, a friend of the family who boarded in my mother’s basement for a few years of my childhood. He had the run of our basement, backyard, and kitchen. Everything beyond that belonged to our two cats, Martha and Cindy the Cat who outlived all.

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Year one of Cindy, who spent 23 years outliving all other pets.

Ralph Waldo Le Mutt (the stuffed dog ) joined our family shortly after Martha  and real-life-dog Ralph moved out, probably around the time I took over the basement room..3rd grade? 4th grade?

In a time when Pound Puppies (the stuffed animals, prior to the cartoons) became popular, Ralph was a found puppy.

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Pound Puppies

My mother and I would, in the summer, spend a week in northern Wisconsin in a rented cabin near a lake in Mercer, Wisconsin. Nothing fancy, as I remember, just a large room containing a kitchen/dining table/two beds and additional room with a bathroom…and maybe a cupboard of extra supplies.

Mercer is HOME OF THE LOONS, those B&W low-riding ducks who sound like a haunting.

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Loon Statue in Mercer

For that week we’d swim, row or canoe, and relax. Maybe we’d drive to see a movie in my mom’s tiny blue Chevrolette or go to a camp-site to make a campfire.

Ralph was found, forgotten and muddy, at such a camp-site. We brought him back to the cabin, washed him, and he’s been mine ever since.

An elementary school friend of mine, Katy T I think, had the female version of Ralph (it had the same Le Mutt tag) and they would play together. Hers was fluffy while mine was always soft but matted in the way that certain stuffed animals never quite recover from being washed.

I think Ralph came with me to college. I think he moved with me to Virginia after college and then back to my hometown when I returned to live with my mom and figure things out.

He didn’t move with me to Japan 16 years ago but he’s here now.. and he has a polar fleece Mary Frances styled bathrobe made.

Ralph Waldo came to Japan in May of 2011.

You see, I live slightly North East of Tokyo. I was affected, though not nearly as badly as others*, by the March 11th 2011 Tohoku earthquake and the Fukushima Nuclear Power aftermath that went with it. It was a traumatic time, for a while I was in my apartment, alone..then in Tokyo with my friend Jo and her son, then in Nagoya with friends, a cat, and a ticket for a three day vacation in Taiwan I’d purchased a month before…then in the boonies of Taiwan with a friend for much longer than those 3 days.

I had not returned to America during any of this.

By April 2011 I was back in my apartment, back to work, checking soil and water information. By mid-April my area’s status as being an anomaly “hot-spot” where ash had affected the topsoil was known and water had iffy days. And my mother had tickets to come see me. To see for herself that I was relatively ok and my location was relatively ok and to see me because. Because.

Note: I am an only child.

Her friends constantly asked her why “She let me stay here”…as if I’m not the stubborn daughter of stubborn parents and controlling WHERE I lived was feasable.

It was a rough trip for both of us. We were both brittle and confused, broken and scared.We get along very well but one breakfast we both managed to say things that left us both in tears. We’re both adept with words and painfully so when we’re feeling hurt…we can cut deep and quickly…so we cried and apologized and recovered.

The trip is mentioned because my mom had no idea what to bring. What do you get the daughter whose circumstances have shaken you to the core and kept you awake for months?

You bring her Ralph. Because you don’t know what else to bring.

Things are better now.

Last March my mom visited. We went down to Kamakura and spent one day going up and down the mountain at Enoshima Island. That morning we’d left out hotel without breakfast and found ourselves at the base of the island mountain hungry and with few options of where we could eat.

We ended up at a Hello Kitty cafe. Each table had a giant Kitty-Chan to sit with. Some women came in small groups, some women came solo and sat with Kitty, and we followed.

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Mom and Kitty Chan

The following morning, back at my apartment, I awoke and found Ralph seated at my small kitchen table. Mom had set him there to make up for the lack of a GIANT KITTY-CHAN lest I experience a sense of loss.

 

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Uncategorized

Prohibition part 1.

This might be an odd place to start a blog. I don’t care.  I started watching the Ken Burn’s  PBS Prohibition a few nights ago and a friend (Hey, Jill!) told me that she’d be excited to read what I thought.

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America DRANK.
Physicians used to recommend whiskey and cider and rum and beer as “far better than water hauled from muddy rivers and stagnant pools”…and they probably weren’t wrong.  It took us a while to get clean water all figured out. We drank all the time and had a daily bell for “grog time” and celebrated everything with it, including public hangings.We celebrated public hanging. Yup.
In the 1800’s our distilled spirits got stronger and more readily available. WATCH THE FUCK OUT. Soon we as a nation were drunk AF.
Women, who depended on the men in their lives for an income, had no means fight this. There was no way out of bad marriage or way to take control of money or their own bodies. Men were drunk AF and women were just kinda fucked.
(#notallmen…#butshitloadsofmenyo)
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In the documentary, we’re still talking about white women. Drinking must have adversely affected free black women in the north but there’ not mention of it. One black man, Fredrick Douglas, has been quoted in the documentary as saying “Whiskey makes me feel like a president.” but he’ll soon join the Temperance & Abolitionist side of things. His hair looks great. When he joins the Temperance side of things we’ll get a second quote, his hair will be silver and it will still look great.
A few white Protestant men get together and create the Washingtonian Society. It’s men helping other men sign pledges and get sober. No church involved so clergy men are PISSED by the idea of men helping men without a kickback to God, so >they< get involved to clean the country of sin. Abolitionists join in and there are groups where Temperance and Abolitionists interests co-exist and overlap… but they’re about to be busy elsewhere.
America starts modest with the idea of temperance, but we’re Americans. We can’t help ourselves when we’re “helping ourselves”. Soon we’re over doing it. Did we say moderate intake? NOW its TOTAL Abstinence for all! Groups beget groups beget more off shoots and some groups make uniforms and special vests. We make our kids pledge and wear stupid sashes! Some groups form separate groups for Black Americans. Fredrick Douglas gets involved now with the temperance folks who cross over with abolitionists. This is pretty much the last we hear about black men and women in part one.
And there are WOMEN.

Women who’ve had no power are now getting involved in auxiliary organization. They’ve got a major stake in this and they have more time to organize (if their children are grown).
These women start getting pissed about how women are doing more of the organizing but not getting a voice in these groups. Susan B Anthony starts her own ALL WOMEN group.
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I must interject, all WHITE protestant woman of a certain level of social class. Susan B. and Elizabeth Cady didn’t mean ALL women.

Continue reading →

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