| Heather Maciak |
| ORIGINALS |
| About the artist... |
| In the summer of 1985, I found a small doll in an antique store. There was something familiar about her~ she was a doll from my childhood! I decided to search for my other childhood dolls, and I was soon buying doll magazines. It wasn’t long before I noticed that there were artists out there, making beautiful original dolls. I had a perfectly good career creating clay critters, but I realized as I gazed at the pictures that I was ready for a new challenge. I had clay and a kiln, as well as a collection of how-to articles from those magazines, and I was an accomplished seamstress~ how hard could it be to make a doll? Harder than you might think, is the answer! I set up my table with clay and my sculpting tools, pictures of my children and an article by the famous Lewis Goldstein~ a step-by-step guide to sculpting a child’s head. It was definitely a challenge, and it didn't take long for me to become totally immersed! Fortunately, beginning sculptors don’t have the perspective to recognize the calibre of their first attempts, or they might never create another thing. I was so proud of my creation that I took photographs and sent them off to Mr. Goldstein, thinking that he would want to know of the genius that he had inspired. I never heard back from him. Luckily for posterity, I soon realized that poor little head should never become a doll. My second effort was considerably better, and I decided that I was ready for the next step. I sculpted arms and legs, sewed up a cloth body, turned her into a doll, and entered her in a local doll competition, where she won first prize in the original doll category. It didn’t matter that there were only two dolls entered, or that the other doll looked a little like Mr. Potato head. I worked steadiily for the next three years, honing my skills as a sculptor, mold maker, greenware cleaner, painter and costumer, and creating a succession of dolls, each better than the last. One day, a friend told me about NIADA. I couldn’t think of anything more inspiring than being surrounded by other doll artists, so I booked a flight and a hotel room, and registered not just for the conference but also for the dreaded visiting artists’ critique. I created two new dolls in preparation for launching myself into the next phase of my career. I’d like to be able to say, “…and the rest is history”, but of course it’s never like that. NIADA was a huge eye-opener, and the dolls I saw were nothing like those in the pages of Doll Reader magazine~ they were true art dolls. Luckily for me, the NIADA artists were friendly, and I had the other visiting artists to commiserate with over the daunting tasks that lay ahead of us, if we were ever to achieve this pinnacle of success. I attended NIADA conferences for the next four years, and finally, I decided that I was ready to apply for membership. "Nope! Not so fast!" they told me! (Actually, what they said was, “You don’t have an identity of design~ go home and make many more dolls.” ) Of course I was crushed, but they were right; I worked harder than I had ever worked before, which is the secret to achieving an identity of design! I applied again, and this time, my work was accepted~ I became a NIADA artist member in 1997. Ten years later, I made another leap, this time into the world of commercial dolls. My goal was to create fine dolls that were more affordable than my originals, and so I created Lexie and Jenny~ two little five-year-old friends. I’m pleased to say that although I didn’t figure out how to make money in my new venture, the dolls have become great favourites with collectors~ they even have their own Yahoo group! In the past two years, I’ve taken a bit of a break from this timeline. In 2009, we moved to Vancouver Island and bought that beautiful piece of property with the wreck of a house on it that I mentioned on the homepage. All of the work that it’s taken to turn our surroundings into a piece of paradise is almost behind us, and I’m looking forward to getting back to sculpting those little faces. I’ll put pictures up on the site as soon as I have someone new to introduce! Thanks so much for your patience, and for reading all the way to the bottom of the page! |