You're Invited.....

....to the Texas Association of Original Doll Artists show at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft

Art Dolls

While in Chicago I was able to stop by the NIADA show and sale and visit with some of the artists.

Here is the wonderfully talented Leslie Molen with some of her beautiful dolls. These are Story Dolls, the one in front is Seahorse.  Their vests open, and inside is printed their story in English and Chinese!

Deb Pope and her wonderful felted creations....

Lesley Keeble with one of her brilliantly detailed dolls

Nancy Wiley has a new book out:  Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which is illustrated with photos of Nancy's dolls.  Here is Nancy with some of these dolls.

 

Several Dutch artists were there, including  Hennie Koffrie

My good friend and very prolific artist Ankie Daanen.

Here she is with just two of the many wonderful dolls she brought this year.

and my very dear friend Marlaine Verhelst with some spectacular dolls.  Here she is with my favorite "Taking Care of Rabbits"

Chicago!

Last week I was in Chicago for the art doll conventions.  We stayed at the Hyatt, and right outside our hotel room window, they were filming the movie Transformers 3.  Every now and then we'd hear explosions and so forth.

Wrecked cars and general mayhem!

fires.....

Cars hanging off the bridge

  

Chicago is a wonderful city.  It was our first time there, so Bob and I did some sightseeing.  We took a wonderful river boat architecture tour.

Chicago skyline from the river

We went to Millenium Park and the Art Institute on Saturday.  This is the Crown Fountain, where they project different faces onto the fountain.  This was really cool! 

Cloud Gate, aka "The Bean"

We saw several brides on Saturday. :)

The Art Institute was AMAZING!!  I can't say enough about it.  We couldn't see everything in one afternoon, but we did see the European and Impressionist art.  Lots of Renoirs.  Here is one of my favorites....

Two Sisters On the Terrace


I even got to do a little genealogical research while we were there.  The Newberry Library has one of the few copies of a particular book I was looking for so that was exciting.

The Newberry

Sunday was ODACA Day. That is the annual luncheon and sale for the Original Doll Artists Council of America. I did not have a sales table this year, but I enjoyed visiting with my fellow artists, especially those I only see once a year. There were four new aritsts inducted this year, including TAODA member Theresa May. Congratulations Theresa! That makes eight artist members of TAODA who are also ODACA artists. The presentation at lunch was outstanding. Sarah Russell had a wonderful program on Native American dolls. Unfortunately my camera batteries chose this time to die and I did not get any photos of the luncheon or sale! :( I'm hoping someone can send me some photos.....

A Nice Surprise

I just got my new issue of Soft Dolls and Animals (Sept. 2010) and have been reading through it the last couple of days.  I turned to the last page today and SURPRISE! there was my doll "New Tricks"!

That was a very nice surprise indeed. :) Thank you SDA!