What do wood shavings and fabric dolls have to do with one another? You may well ask.
I've been learning how to carve wood, which might seem a strange occupation for a cloth-doll artist. However, I am "cross-training" and learning a new skill - the art of making wooden puppets. The current course I am taking, from the Worlds of Puppets, is teaching me more than carving skills. It is also reinforcing my ideas of storytelling with my dolls, as well as providing me with tools that I can apply to my doll-making.
Right now my training involves making a stand for the puppet I will start building next week. I have a new respect for carvers - it requires strength of hand and dexterity to create the cuts you want!
The term cross-training is used frequently in sports situations and business settings, but I recently heard it for the first time in conjunction with artistic pursuits. I was listening to a talk at the virtual Craft @ the Edge symposium in Newfoundland at the beginning of the month. The theme was innovation in craft and there were several speakers in attendance, including my boss and local PG artist Twyla Exner. I don't know who brought up the topic of cross-training (was it you, Twyla?) and I had an "aha" moment - cross training can enhance what we, as artists, create, as well as expand and improve our practices. Bernd (the puppeteer teaching the online puppet course) also spoke of reaching out to other disciplines for inspiration.
I've always explored different artistic avenues and have noticed, in recent years, that my explorations are circling inward around the dolls and fabric art. The key now will be to find more focused cross-training opportunities that feed my passion, while leaving myself open to totally random opportunities as well, as those might provide me with unexpected additions to my repertoire.
Do you do any artistic cross training, and, if so, what do you do?
One topic that came up in the latest puppetry lesson was the need to make technical drawings of your proposed puppet, to ensure that all the body parts will fit together and work properly. I could have used that piece of advice when constructing my latest pair of dolls. The usual pattern pieces didn't work for the poses I would like them to adopt, and working those ideas out on paper might have saved me a few hours of backtracking with limb formation.
Oh, well, that part of the doll-making is done for now and I will be fitting them for clothing next. For now, they sit demurely in makeshift clothing under the oregano flowers we plucked from the veggie garden as we tucked it in for the winter.
Comments