Soft Sculpture Sculpture I Voodoo Dolls, Guardian Angel Dolls, Ugly Dolls, etc. Student examples “I started doodling some little monsters, and when it came time do to it, I had two that I couldn’t decide between. That’s the reason I made two of them.”-Emily Bever “There are two pieces to my sculpture so that I can keep one and my best friend can keep the other. Wherever we go we will always have them with us to be a reminder of our friendship.”- Mary Genova Objective: • Students will create a soft sculpture using a pattern, fabric and the whip stitch to create a “creature” which mimics either the ugly doll, guardian angel doll, voodoo doll, or other cultural doll. Final soft sculpture should measure at least 12” in height or width and display applique & decorative stitching in at least one area of the sculpture. Terms: • Soft Sculpture: Soft sculpture is a type of sculpture made using cloth, foam rubber, plastic, paper, fibers and similar material that are supple and nonrigid. It was popularized by Claes Oldenburg in the 1960s. • Sewing: To join or attach with stitching. • Whip stitch: To sew with overcast stitches or stitches passing over an edge. Used in finishing a fabric edge or binding two pieces of fabric together. • Cross stitch: X-shaped stitches created in a tiled pattern to form a picture. • Running Stitch: or straight stitch is the basic stitch in hand-sewing and embroidery, on which all other forms of sewing are based. The stitch is made by passing the needle in and out of the fabric. Running stitches may be of varying length. • Spool:The holder of thread. There are wooden spools, plastic spools, cardboard tube spools, and cone spools, as well as others. • Thimble: protective devices for your middle finger when doing hand sewing. Terms Continued: • Pattern: anything fashioned or designed to serve as a model or guide for something to be made: ex. a paper pattern for a dress. • Applique: Sewing a piece of fabric atop another after folding under a small bit of the fabric to create a clean edge. • Embellish: Adding special stitching, appliques, charms, or other decorations to your sewing project. Anything that adds something extra to the original design. • Raw (edge) The edge of fabric that is not stitched or finished. • Seam: The result when two pieces of fabric are sewn together along a line. • Slit: An open part of a seam, the bottom usually…often left for stuffing. Running Stitch Cross Stitch Whip stitch History of Soft Sculpture • Pop Art: art in which commonplace objects (such as comic strips, soup cans, road signs, and hamburgers) were used as subject matter and were often physically incorporated in the work. The Pop art movement was largely a British and American cultural phenomenon of the late 1950s and ’60s and was named by the art critic Lawrence Alloway. Works by such Pop artists as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, and Robert Indiana were characterized by their portrayal of any and all aspects of popular culture that had a powerful impact on contemporary life; their iconography— taken from television, comic books, movie magazines, and all forms of advertising—Although the critics of Pop art described it as vulgar, sensational, nonaesthetic, and a joke, its proponents (a minority in the art world) saw it as an art that was democratic and nondiscriminatory, bringing together both connoisseurs and untrained viewers. Culture/Artist: • Ugly Dolls: From the creative minds of two love struck artists David Horvath and Sun-Min Kim emerge the Uglydoll family! What started as a drawing of a playful orange character known as Wage has turned into a whole new world of fun! In 2001, when David's soon to be wife and creative partner Sun-Min had to return to Korea, he sent her many "I miss you" letters with his little Wage character drawn at the bottom. Sun-Min sewed Wage into a plush doll and sent him to David as a surprise gift. David asked Sun-Min to sew a couple more for the Giant Robot store in Los Angeles and they sold out in one day! A very excited Sun-Min sewed many more and those sold just as fast! SunMin and David then began to pull more characters from the Uglyverse, a universe where UGLY meant unique and special, to translate into plush Uglydolls. They both met again at their very first Uglydoll Toy Fair booth (a small 6x6 booth made of felt and wood) in New York, where they would go on to win Toy Of The Year 4 years later! Culture/Artist: • Voodoo Dolls: Originated in Haiti. It is based upon a merging of the beliefs and practices of West African peoples with Roman Catholic Christianity, which was brought about as African slaves were brought to Haiti in the 16th century and forced to convert to the religion of their owners, whilst they largely still followed their traditional African beliefs. • Voodoo tradition was brought to the New Orleans region by African slaves, often via Haiti and other islands in the eastern Caribbean. Voodoo’s arrival in the Louisiana region caused it to interlope on other traditions already in place, such as Native American and Atchafalaya Gypsy nature and rootwork practices. Ultimately, African Voodoo’s assimilation into these practices resulted in a potent regional hoodoo tradition that persists to this day. • Popular among slaves, some speculate that making voodoo dolls and sticking them with pins was one method by which the slave could exert some control over the master: Culture/Artist: • Guardian Angel Dolls: A guardian angel is an angel assigned to protect and guide a particular person. The belief in guardian angels can be traced throughout all antiquity. The concept of guardian angels and their hierarchy was extensively developed in Christianity in the 5th century. • The theology of angels, and guardian spirits, has undergone many refinements since the 400s, and belief in both the East and the West is that guardian angels protect whichever person to whom God assigns them, and present prayers to God on that person's behalf. The Catholic Church's calendar of saints includes a memorial for the guardian angels on October 2. Ugly Dolls Voodoo Dolls Guardian Angel Dolls Miscellaneous Ideas: