It's incredible what one finds... sometimes I stumble upon something on Etsy, sometimes I get sent a link or quite literally one thing leads to another.
Today's Etsy newsletter didn't have an exact theme - it was in fact a colorful mix of all sorts of creative things. One thing sprang to my eye immediately: Margaux Lange and her Re-membering Barbie Fondly jewelery. There's more, and even more incredible stuff, on her website as well. As much as I am a Barbie doll collector and love my dolls to bits, I have nothing against people who find other creative uses for dolls. And I think her saying "re-membering Barbie fondly" shows a love for our gal too. Margaux gives her a new "life" as jewelery that will be cherished to by the owner, whilst I sometimes give played-with old dolls a new life by way giving them a makeover or at least cleaning them up and re-doing their hair etc. (which is something I really, really love to do). Seeing this jewelery also reminded me of an exhibition a few years ago at the Froschlocke art gallery here in Zurich. They had all kinds of works made from or inspired by Barbie doll(s) from several artists. There was jewelery too - charm bracelets with Barbie shoes, a cigar cutter made out of Ken's butt, or loose Barbie legs packaged like meat in the supermarket. A bit of digging unearthed a few pictures that I took then:
The "Barbie-Q"
I had fun there and a good laugh at the ideas some people have about what one could do with a Barbie doll. And yes, of course some of these people have also thought about how they see Barbie, or about things like materialism, body-image and so on, while other things were just plain tongue-in-cheek. Whatever. It was interesting, funny, inspiring - I have no problem with this.Further browsing in the "archive" of my time as editor of the Fashion Doll Club Switzerland's archive also led me to the photos of the works by the Austrian artist Andrea Holzinger, whose exhibition I visited in Vienna in May 2003 (I reported on it in the same issue as on the Froschlocke exhibition). She did a series of photo-realistic oil paintings of Barbie dolls and accessories. My ultra-favourite was this very colorful, very pop-artsy (and, sadly, very huge and way beyond my budget) painting:
Isn't it gorgeous? I guess it shows my love of pop art and bold & colorful things.Here's another one:
The one painting that I did buy (and could afford) now hangs in my living room:
She did a whole series of these small portraits, which were all very pretty. Those who know my Facebook avatar might have started to wonder about that one now... now, that one's by me, a small experiment which was of course inspired by this portrait. Mine's a bit smaller though, and I used acrylic paint:
I googled Andrea Holzinger, out of curiosity - and she still does gorgeous, colorful photo-realistic paintings, which can be seen on here website. I really like these other paintings too. If I ever happen to have big, white, empty walls wherever I may live in the future, this is the kind of thing I would want to have hanging on them, I think. Well, I can dream, can't I?A fun blog showing another way of turning something old into something new is New dress a day, which my friend alterted me to. What fun! It's all about seeing something in a dress that one would probably usually not look at twice at the thrift shop. I admit there are quite a few that I would honestly just pass over without thinking twice ;-). Her ideas are just so clever.
As for myself, I have recently done another Willy-nilly, though this is a personal one - a card to accompany a wedding present. I cut up the vouchers for the things I had picked from the wedding gift wish book (gifts for the honeymoon in Florida) and added vintage brochure cutouts and pictures and scrapbook-stickers. I spent a fun afternoon cutting, puzzling and gluing. No kidding, this is a serious business - cutting things up, putting things together in the right way, finding the right mix, the right look...
So, now I'm off to sew a vintage slip down to my size (yes, it was my size considering the measurements that were given, but it turned out to be still too big...).Karin
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