Chriselda and Voodoo Ghost Papa Legba
The ideas for both dolls came at the same time. It was an absolutely new field of work for me. First, I had to study the basic process of making ball jointed dolls, before I could start to design these figures. But it is always great fun for me to learn new things! So again and again I try new techniques and media, this is a big gain for my mind and my works!
Chriselda: Born in winter, from a god lost child!
Chriselda was my very first doll! She should be beautiful, cute and a little bit frightening at the same time. It's in the eye of the beholder whether I succeed or not! It was close to Christmas, so all my wintry feelings flowed into this character. She is like a little spooky carol singer. Chriselda:“ Born in winter, a from god lost child“.
Voodoo Ghost Papa Legba
Voodoo Ghost Papa Legba was my second doll, I began to work on him while I did the last sewing and crochet processes on Chriselda. He was finished as my late new years baby in February. The topic of Voodoo comes often in very different forms to my artworks. Because although I'm an atheist, I've a great interest in any religions. My neutral and respectful point of few allows me to experience rituals as exciting events in all its beauty and strangeness. Because this is something mysterious and cryptic for me it attracts my so much, that it finds many times its way into my artworks!
Diseasea, Ball joined doll
She was my third doll and I was starting to develop a kind of obsession on making this little strange, funny guys! I stared with sketching some characters and came up with a little Zombie like, lady figure, who has just arisen from the bier. She wears that kind of hospital cloth, every patient gets, but hers is dirty, old and rotten, because she was wandering helpless around at the realm of death and just found her way out to the world of the living! She may have died from a disease and has rests of old, bloody bandages on her body!
More ironical it was that i accidentally suffered from a really heavy cold during my work on Diseasea. This fact even forced me to rest between the working process and believe it, only a really heavy load brings me away from my work! This circumstance was name giving for the little lady!
Voodoo Doll
Sewing this little ritual figure was more or less something I promised to my mum before she became suddenly very ill and died. So I did it very close after she died to make my promise come true and it was part of my deep mourning.
It all started when I was a young girl long before I studied painting at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna, but planned to do it and worked hard on my skills to get a chance to be accepted at the Masterclass of the great painter of “Fantastic Realism”, Professor Wolfgang Hutter.
Even in my very early years I preferred dark themes. I worked on an oil painting, showing a Voodoo priest with a Voodoo doll, that has a big needle sticking in its body. It should be a soft doll, hanging like a dead human body.
I also wanted to make a real Voodoo doll, because they look so creepy, beautiful and exotic and I wanted one as decoration for my increasingly spooky room at my parents’ home. I designed it and my very creative mum sewed it for me. Our little art work, we both liked it very much. And I must admit, we were a little bit proud of our product. We were very sorry that it disappeared accidentally when we moved to another place. We had no explanation for its vanishing, but it came over many years often to our mind. And one day we planned that we'll do one again together, just for fun. But then my mother died and I thought about the many wonderful things we did together and also these things we couldn't do anymore. I can't explain it, maybe triggered by the right cotton for that figure, which I found between the things of my mum. I felt the strong wish to make it with her stuff, to make it for her. Until now, this crazy little doll makes me sad by looking at it and at the same time it puts a little satisfied smile one my face! And I think to myself, Mum would like it!!!
See these, and many other crafts designed and made by Dagmar R Ritter here: www.darkness.bplaced.net/
