“What We Find”
Why, How, and Thanks
Why
I was inspired to make this series by two lifelong passions - a spiritual inquiry into the true nature of human being, and a reverence for beautiful things. Are these ideas at odds? Or maybe respect for beauty is a form of love, and love can never be a mistake. This series helped me explore these ideas and more.
From when I was a young girl I’ve been collecting feathers, birds nests, and flowers on my daily walks. I love thrift stores and antique shops. And I adore ruins! One day I found this gorgeous Victorian dollhouse at our local used furniture store, Circa. I immediately fell in love, handed them my credit card, and had that dollhouse delivered to the second bedroom of my apartment. By the way, it’s huge - see video above!
Around the same time, I rediscovered a box of beautiful hand made doll clothes - Barbie doll size - that my maternal grandmother (Nellie Freeman) crocheted for my sisters and I when we were at doll-playing age. I was enchanted with these miniature works of art! And then I knew that I needed to dress someone in those clothes and put them in that wonderful dollhouse.
Since then I moved out of my apartment into a very small house with my partner DJ. The dollhouse went into storage with everything else. One by one I moved or sold or gave away every item in that storage unit except - the dollhouse! It is too big for the house and the attic. And the storage fees are too large for me to tolerate forever. It was time to do the series.
Meanwhile, there was not enough room to display or store all the fascinating objects that snared my attention, but there was room on my computer - so my digital hoarding life began. I started photographing the things I admired, and kept them meticulously tagged in my database (which now approaches half a million images - ooops! Oh yeah, and we added a lot of external hard drives!)
The series sprang to life when the marvelous, Astrid and Liv Cordano agreed to be my models.
Then I had the fun of deciding what these young ladies would be doing in this dollhouse. During a mentorship program with the incomparable Brooke Shaden, I was inspired to compose this series as a way to explore what matters to me most - my spiritual inquiries and explorations. All my life I’ve felt like existence was more than just get born, grow up, make money, retire, die. I’ve gone to church, I’ve studied with gurus, I’ve read the mystical texts, I’ve meditated. And now I’ve created a journey in a dollhouse.
Why a dollhouse? Why doll clothes? I asked myself over and over. And as I spent time in those empty little rooms, it began to dawn on me. A dollhouse is a fake environment, made up. But the dolls don’t know that. They think it’s real. They wear the clothes, play the roles, and don’t ask any questions. That’s the way most of us walk through life.
In a workshop with Daniel Gregory, I suddenly realized: the dollhouse represents the mind! We divide our mind into little empty compartments and try to fit ourselves - and others - into them. It’s a trap. It’s open, we can walk out at any moment, but we don’t. We just decorate the walls.
And we decorate the walls with the past - what we’ve learned, what we’ve been taught to value, what we think the world is handing us. We are our own jailer, and often we defend our prison.
I researched dollhouses. I learned that people like dollhouses because a dollhouse gives them a sense of control. Maybe we feel like we can’t control our lives or the world, but we can control what happens in that dollhouse.
So…my characters in this series were going to be in a dollhouse, wearing doll clothes (so pretty!) but they are NOT DOLLS! At first they play the game - they actually initiate the game by bringing the costumes to life. But quickly they start to realize that this is a game of limitations: in this room I’m expected to cook the meals. In that room I’m expected to go along with social media. In that room I’m supposed to get married and have kids. In that room I’m supposed to accept what’s written in that book.
But those rooms are too small for these girls. These girls are finding their way out. Each and every time.
At the end of the series, the characters have transcended the dollhouse. They have found that they don’t need these constraints, they don’t need these costumes, they don’t need to play this game. They have found that they are The Beyond. Only the empty dollhouse and empty doll clothes remain.
When the exhibition of these images is complete, it will be time for me to part with my own dollhouse. But in the process of creating this series, I have shed some illusions.
How
These images are photographic composites. That means I’ve taken many different photographs and combined them into one image. I personally photographed all of the components of these images except a few lighting effects from Rikard Rodin and Kristina Sherk. There are no stock image components. There are no AI-generated components.
Throughout this presentation on my website I have included photographs and videos of some of the physical objects I photographed for this series - so you can see what they look like in “real life.”
I photographed my human models, the doll clothes, and most of the physical objects in the teeny micro-studio in my home. Others were photographed in their natural environments (bunnies and frogs, for example!) The dollhouse was mostly photographed in the rented storage unit where it has been living.
To “dress” the life-size human models in doll-sized clothes: First I photographed my human models in the pose designed for the final scene. Then I dressed dolls in the doll clothes and put the dolls in the same pose as the human models. That takes repetition and many small adjustments! Care was taken to match lighting conditions, and it helped that both humans and dolls were photographed in my little studio. Then I used Adobe Photoshop to combine the photograph of the model with the photograph of the doll. Sometimes I had to warp elements in photoshop, clone little bits, etc.
I have changed the colors of all the clothes, and many of the objects, to help communicate their meaning create visual harmony within the images and the series.
More information about the components of each image, and the meaning of each scene, are included in individual pages about each image. To find those explanations, press the button below to go to the main gallery, and click the “How this image was made” button.
I hope you enjoy.
Thanks to:
Astrid and Liv Cordano, for modeling
My life partner DJ Hill, for being supportive and patient when I do things like spend 15 minutes photographing bubbles in a public aquarium
My photography support group - Amy Helmick, Christina Siu, Christine Houston, and Yanninia Madigan - for seeing me through every aspect of this series
Brooke Shaden, for being inspiring, authentic, and generous, and for putting me on the right track
To the crew of The Rusty Iris, for hosting my first exhibition of this series.
My maternal grandmother, Nellie Freeman, for crocheting those beautiful doll clothes more than 50 years ago.
