Collaborative Luuvv

Like that title eh? Yes, I know it 'tis a bit sketchy, but nonetheless illustrative of my new creative collaborative venture since the adjournment of the always eventful and highly successful Evolution of the Doll confederacy. For those of you not familiar with this series of objets d'art made by some very talented chickadees (including your Lady of the Linoleum) take a looksee at the website and a my past posts/presentations of the girls, boys, eunuchs, weird winged caterpillar thingies...Did I mention that there was much imbibing during our monthly meetings? Um, yeah.

Hey Doll! Homepage

The Dolls:

Be Mine
Ballerinasaurus
Sadie
Homicide
PSI-A14
Deep Shockra
Helga On Wheels
Paperdoll
Siren
Djinn
The Babysitter
Guignol
Gregor

At any rate, the Hey Doll! experience was so successful that we decided to keep on truckin' and undertake another project. However, there was just a bit of housekeeping that needed to happen before the onset of work.

Firstly, we had a group make-over. No not the spa treatment kind, though that would've been nice after installing the last gallery show. Instead, for various reasons not the least of which included pregnancy, half of our group (six out of twelve) headed for the exit sign and no amount of bribery would deter them. So, we bade the drop-outs farewell and plodded onward with a new project in mind and a HUGE LACK OF SYNERGY due to such a small number of collaborators remaining. At that point our leaner, but not meaner group set fingers to the keyboard, made phone calls galore and schmoozed the heck out of our contacts in search of the "right" people. Despite a bit of participant trial and error we've now got a healthy group of twelve creative cohorts ready to get to work!

Secondly, some of the core members of the group (there are a few of us who lean toward control freakage) felt that we needed to review and possibly rehab the logistics of the upcoming process based upon the things that we learned while working on the dolls. Now, let me back up a bit here. Our little coven of creative chickadees makes work in round robin fashion. Meaning everyone works on every piece. It's all about trust, surrender, respect...blah, blah, blah. It's also a process which is rooted in surprise, discovery and quite simply, freedom. None of us had ever worked this way before. Personally, I found that working in a round robin forced me to open my mind and forget about any preconceptions I may have had about a particular piece because when a doll left my studio for someone else's I had no idea how dramatic or unexpected the changes would be. It's a pretty amazing experience, to say the least.

At any rate, round robin-ing rocked, but critique (a crucial aspect of the academics of making) just didn't happen. Therefore, the control freaks and the larger group made a pact. No matter how hammered we get at our monthly meetings, we still must have critical dialog about the work being made.

So, new group "look"(5 painters, 3 sculptors myself included, 1 mixed media artist, 1 glass artist, 1 filmmaker, 1 extraordinarily creative kid who happens to be my offspring)...check, new energy...check, new process...check, new project...check. What are we making, inquiring minds want to know? GAMES!

Yes, peeps, games. Board games, memory games, R-P-G's. Carnival games, video games (uh, maybe not), games of prophecy! Let's take a look at a few of our infant contributions shall we?

We got yer basic colorful grid who aspires to be a Risk type-o-game when it grows up.



Looks harmless enough right? Well, the benign-looking board below is actually a scavenger hunt fabrication that taunts it's players with nefarious confabulations of verbiage. And as if that wasn't enough, teams of players must then go forth, seek said confabulations and document them. Okey dokey. Did I tell you that we drink lots of wine at these meetings?



Direct from the lounge on some distant spacestation...



Ooooh, glass runes for divining events to come...



Along with a trusty Gom Jabbar!



And finally toys for tarts!

You've got to admit, these here game pieces do look a teensy weensy bit phallic...



Lucky for you peeps, we are at the beginning of this project. So much more to come. Who knows what will transpire over the succeeding months. However, of this you can be sure...there will be drinkin'. There will be laughin'. And apparently there will be games that are not child appropriate...