Creative Industry Report: Enchanted Doll

 

~Warning this post contains ‘nude’ images and dismembered doll parts that may cause discomfort to some viewers.~

 

What is Enchanted Doll?

“Enchanted Doll” is a luxury toy label that creates handcrafted porcelain, more recently, resin ball-jointed dolls. The company was founded by Marina Bychkova.

“Enchanted Doll” was named after Paul Gallico’s fictional short story, where a young woman creates dolls with so much love that they enchant people at first sight with their compelling, delicate, life-like beauty, is kind of like what the artist herself is doing her own career. By naming her company after such a story Marina Bychkova hopes to do the same, to create the most beautiful doll.

About the Artist:

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Marina Bychkova was born in Siberia, close to the borders of China. She states in an interview that it was these cultural influences that could be seen in some of her work. This influences were further bolstered when she moved to Vancouver later in life, where she states also has a very strong Chinese culture. Hence there is a sizeable number of Russian and Chinese themed folk dolls and small traces of their influence in the rest of her works.

Marina Bychkova’s reason for creating her company stems from when she was 6 where she was appalled by the mediocrity of mass produced dolls. She started to make dolls of her own, but it was not until later on in her life, when she enrolled to the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, that she truly decided to turn her passion into her career. At that point she was not studying to make dolls, because she was already making them, but she did say that she had honed her own stylistic ability to make her dolls more unique.

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The Creation process.

More than mere playthings, Enchanted Dolls are a brand of elegantly sculpted and articulated works of art. Adorned with elaborate costumes and graced with precious gemstones, metals, and rare found objects, each ball-jointed porcelain doll intricately conveys an aspect of our humanity.

According to Marina Bychkova, each doll takes about an average of 500 hours of production time.

She first goes about designing ball joints and the body lines that she wants on her dolls. When the parts are design, she goes about making the 13 body pieces out of polymer clay. When the clay parts are done, she makes them into plaster moulds, and later cast them using porcelain slip. The parts are then fired in a kiln once in low fire and later after sanding and cleaning, it is fired again in high fire.

 

After they are baked, she sands them to a satin finish and paints them using glass ceramic china paint and fires them again multiple times.

After the body is painted she lines the edges of the ball joints with leather and string up the doll. When the doll is finished, she starts created the clothes and accessories, either out of textiles, found objects or casting them from gold or silver.

My general thoughts after reviewing her work:

What I enjoy greatly from her dolls firstly comes in the form of her technical skills. When I chanced upon her years ago it is the beauty of the doll and their enchanting presentation that drew me to this artist.

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Her dolls are painted realistically, from the way she paints and blushes the porcelain, she gives the dolls life. Staring into their painted glassy eyes there is a keen sense of sadness or fragility to them that makes them feel vulnerable and mysterious. There is more depth to them then the average Barbie which is further presented in  her photoshoots and posts.

After looking deeper into this artist, I find her dolls even more intriguing. She states in her interview that for her dolls to be considered an art form, they need to have something more than just pure aesthetics. Thus the dolls themselves are named in a way that either reflect the artist, her love for mythology, fairy tales, and folklore, her fears, experiences, or world issues that she feels strongly for. She then goes about writing about her short comments or opinions about the topics.

The reason for this stylistic choice of painting is also rather thought provoking. In an interview with Pixelsurgeon she says, “I find this deliberate denial of the essence of life to be ignorant and appalling. I don’t know why there is so much fear and shame associated with human sexuality. Every Barbie needs to have a vagina. Every Ken needs a penis.”

When asked why does she do so, she explains that most dolls though imitate human form are sterilized through a complete removal of sex organs. She continues to describe the process of such to seem like they are being cleansed of their sinful humanity and denying the essence of life. Hence for her dolls, it is important to include even the genitalia.

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Finally I also admire her ability to be able to make every part of the doll from scratch. Doll making is multidisciplinary if you are making every part of them from scratch, hence I am amazed by her ability to master all forms of doll making. From sculpting the body and accessories and casting them out of different materials to making their tiny wigs, doll clothes and furniture if there are any, and painting the dolls with such a likeness to realism.

References:

  • https://www.facebook.com/ohmoretv/videos/747943238736741/
  • http://www.enchanteddoll.com/

I Light Critique

I managed to catch a few of the interactive works when I went for I Light. The first being ‘Facey Thing’ by Uji Studios which was a sort of satirical take on the selfie culture amongst the masses in this day and age.

Fig 1. Facey Thing by Uji Studios, 2019, I Light, Singapore.
pictures screenshot from video taken by: En Cui

When you first encounter it, ‘Facey Thing’ is a bright huge screen that is twice the height of an ordinary human.

Diagram 1, mock up of Facey Thing

So the set up is simple, consisting of a screen which is hooked up to a single camera that captures the passerbys that are oving in front of the work. The code that runs this work is set to capture the faces of the people who are standing in front of it.

Fig 2. Facey Thing by Uji Studios, 2019, I Light, Singapore.
pictures screenshot from video taken by: En Cui

Fig 3. Facey Thing by Uji Studios, 2019, I Light, Singapore.
pictures screenshot from video taken by: En Cui

When your face is recognised by the screen it is boxed up as seen in fig 2 above and would later evolve to fig 3. In Fig 3, the faces of the passerbys are blown up and dragged upward almost as though painting the canvas with their face. So in this case the images on the screen are temporarily changed by the people who interact with it, if not it is no more then an ordinary close circuit video recording. It warps the initial intention of Selfies to be one that portray one self as ‘glam’ to being very ‘unglam’ instead by warping the passerby’s faces. 

Fig 4. Facey Thing by Uji Studios, 2019, I Light, Singapore.
pictures screenshot from video taken by: En Cui

The people that decided to interact it were waving their hands of moving about oddly to try and get their face recognised by the system.

Subsequently I caught “Shades of Temporality” by SWEATSHOPPE – Blake Shaw and Bruno Levy.

Fig 5. Shades of Temporality by SweatShoppe, 2019, I Light Singapore
Text: 你好 Lei <3
Written by: En Cui, Christine and Elizabeth

This work has two elements to it, the first being the visualiser projecting the ‘painted image’ on to the wall, and the second being the paint rollers.

Diagram 2, Mock up of the painting brushes used in Shades of Temporarity

Diagram 3, Mock up of the set up of Shades of Temporarity

When the button in diagram 2 is pressed the paint brush head up turns green. this is then sensed by the camera and the visualiser will send an out put of light that will corespond to the area where the paint brush touched, projecting a loop of graphical illustrations of Singapore.

In this case the audience are encouraged to make temporary graffity designs on the wall, hence creating art. the audience is given the ability to write what ever they want to express themselves in anyway they see fit.

Mark Making Research

Mark making is the term used to define when a line or various lines are put together to form textures and patterns on any surface.

Mark Making is present in our everyday lives, starting with the most obvious being writing with a pen or pencil. Each style of writing is different based on how a person manipulates their pen or pencil, hence some are more curvaceous whereas some are more linear. Hence some people may find some handwriting more pleasing to read then others.

These lines have certain qualities that ‘persuade’ us to feel in a certain way.

An example of which can be found in Wassily Kandinsky’s “Composition VII”

Source taken from: http://www.theartstory.org/artist-kandinsky-wassily-artworks.htm#pnt_4

Wassily Kandinsky is well known for his interpretations of various music pieces. “Composition VII” makes use of contrasting lines that clash and overlap each other. The various directions, and individual shapes each lines takes seem to compete with the others, which creates chaos and/or confusion.

In the case of paintings, brushes have the ability to shape a line into various shapes. However we also make tools with various tips to create a unique stroke.

Creating your tools, or having tools with tips of various shapes and sizes can in various patterns despite being used in a similar manner.

source from: https://es.pinterest.com/pin/850687817084708293/

As seen by the above, the rougher material results in a spindly, almost scratchy effect. When used in sharp swift movements the lines are thinner,  that could resemble irritation or confusion. The second tool creates rounder lines, that seem more uniform than the first. The last imitates a dry brush resulting in segregated segments of ink within each stroke.

Colour too plays a part in mark marking, creating weight and shadows, which gives emphasis to certain part of the image.

source from: https://es.pinterest.com/pin/151363237451900564/

Darker segments tend to be more eye catching, as it creates weight to the image. However, negative spaces within dark contrasting areas act as an accent, which draws attention beyond the dark spaces, like a pathway to other parts of the painting.