LITTLE PEOPLE

Making box constructions started when I was twelve. A friend showed me how to make tiny dolls with cork heads and pipe cleaner bodies. We made hair from thread and clothing from felt and used anything we could find to decorate them. They needed a home so my friend and I built a school using wooden cigar boxes laid flat and popsicle stick ladders to connect each classroom. There were more than 40 dolls including students, teachers and a school principal. We won “best of show” at the annual doll show.

 Years later I started making the same dolls but with clay heads. I took the dolls on the road with me and gave them away as gifts. But the ones that came home needed safe storage spaces, so I started making boxes using other objects from our travels.

The little person in Dead Stuck is Mostyn Watkins, named after a farmer we met in the Forest of Dean in England. He is holding a dried clematis and a basket with a green June Beetle that I found along the hedgerows in Cornwall. Behind him are funerary objects picked from the trash in Kyoto, Japan. The wooden box has “Dead Stuck for Bugs” stamped into the outside surface.

The boxes in this collection are homes for my Little People.