ADO Featured Artist: La Srta Pil
This week's doll maker feature is Pola, from La Srta Pil (also known as holli on etsy.com).
(originally appeared on the ADO blog)
Please tell us about yourself. What is your name? Where do you live? What makes you tick? My name is Paola Zakimi. I'm living in Argentina in a town named Villa Giardino, a very small town. When did you start making dolls? Why did you start making dolls? I start when I was a child, very little. I used to make fabric dolls from the dresses of my mom. I studied sculpture at schools of art and I always feel fascination about the dolls as objects of art, especially antique dolls. When I held the first antique doll in my hands i thought...omg I want to make one of these...and I can! Who or what influences you? Inspires you? It's hard to say, I think people, characters you meet or see in some places... could be a magazine or an old photo or a story... Influences, well, I love Calder, but I don't feel my work is like that. Tell us a little about your dolls and your process for making them. Materials, preliminary sketches, inspiration, etc. My girls are made with paper mache and structure. Sometimes I use air dry clay, simple and easy to use. I start to looking for information, if the doll is commissioned or I'm just making one for my shops, I look for some particularity: time, life, era, Victorian, Italian Second War, how the little ones use to dress, what kind of education...and of course I love to know more about the person who will have the doll, see her or his work or face, this is part of the first steps with the sketches, then color comes along with the idea, and the personality comes when I finish the head and the eyes. I love old fabrics, so delicate and soft, the little embroidery, I always try to use recycled fabric and I dye it myself, with herbs. Do you have a favorite doll? It can be handmade by you, handmade by someone else, or even (gasp) mass production. A skeleton made in fabric, wood and metal, I still have the doll. I love it, I used to have these ideas about SAN LA MUERTE , and I started to create icons about that theme, then came the doll, a skeleton, it's pretty lovely. Besides making dolls, what do you do? Job, other creative pursuits, hobbies, etc. I'm working on some projects with illustrations, painting and fabric design. The last is very new but it's running ok, I love serigraphie (silk screen), so I do some of that when I have time. What are some of your favorite: movies, books, websites, magazines, foods, tv shows? (Any or all!) Movies....oh so many... but the movie I really treasure and I see again and again is "Sen and Chihiro's Spiriting Away" No Kamikakushi from: Hayao Miyazaki, he is a genius. Books: Journey to the End of the Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline. I'm pretty bad at remembering things! Websites: well I use Flickr a lot, I like it, perhaps because I don't have to write too much! :P I like to eat chocolate, coulant! oh my...when I think of this I feel so good!!! TV: I was a big fan of the Flight of the Concords, Larry David, Seinfeld of course. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be and why? Where I am right now, feels like home, but I think when I become an a old woman I would like to be in a tropical place... feel the warm water, hot weather (HELP ME, please!!!!), I feel always cold... Where do you see yourself in one year? Five years? Ten years? I'm a very hard worker, so I think working...a lot, I love to do what I do, so I see that. Where can we find you on the internet? (blog, website, Etsy shop, eBay, et al.) you can find me at:
Thank you, Pola!
