A St. Albert Farmers’ Market vendor has enough dolls to fill a small community, intricate pieces of sculptured art that capture the imagination with unique poses.
This week Market Place takes you to visit Karen Moir’s simple booth filled with three tables of these tiny magical creatures.
“I love to put my dolls on a table and have people touch them. They all tell a story,” says Moir
Romantic couples hug each other. A fisherman, pole stretched across his lap, dangles his bare feet in water. A mermaid lounges on a boulder catching a few rays. Three children climb a huge chunk of driftwood. A couple roasts marshmallows at a campsite and a woman crosses her legs in a lotus position.
Each doll is either a snapshot of our lives, a memory or a fantasy. And they all tell a story with universal appeal.
To create her sculptures, Moir uses one of the oldest techniques known to mankind – wire armature. An armature serves as a framework to build the sculpture and provides a structure for material covering it.
It is usually made from dark aluminum wire that is stiff, but easily bent and twisted into a desired shape. Once the preferred shape is made, the Gibbons-based artist glues it to a rock base. She then fleshes out the doll sculpture by wrapping the wire with repurposed material to build character.
“All my life I’ve done some form of design – sewing, woodworking, papier mâché. This is a compilation of how it all comes together,” Moir explains.
Born and raised on a Northern Alberta farm, she spent a great deal of time outdoors developing a passion and healthy respect for nature. “I would do anything to be outdoors.”
As a young girl two of her creative outlets were sewing and baking.
“I would take clothes apart and redesign the fabric. Same with baking. I didn’t follow a recipe. I just put ingredients in together.”
While raising a family, she dabbled in various artistic pursuits and about 10 years ago, she experimented with making handcrafted dolls. Her first doll was a papier mâché lady with a bustle on her back.
“She was beautiful, but more rustic.”
To stabilize the dolls, Moir mounts each figure on a rock base. While she matches fabric to the colours in rock, it was the rock that determines the doll’s pose.
“When I pick up a rock it speaks to me. I get a sensation of what to do from its shape.”
For instance, if Moir finds an oval, flat rock, it is perfect for a girl lying on her stomach. A slightly smaller, rounder rock is more conducive to constructing a crouched back-catcher.
Moir quickly discovered that if the doll’s body position was accurate, the artistic expression was correct. And rather than give them faces, the dolls are silhouettes.
“When we look with our eyes to find a face, we sometimes miss the most critical part of what the artist is trying to say. It’s important to feel the art form.”
So strong is this core belief, that Moir has named her business Lasting Expressions.
“It’s an expression of love. We have to look within our heart to feel it.”
For Moir, the important thing is for people to feel the joy of what she sees in her art – an expression of feelings without words.
“I love the feeling of joy and love. Right now the world is lacking in it. When I have people come back to me three years later and say, ‘I love her as much now as I did when I bought her,’ it gives me a lot of joy.”
To view a photo selection of dolls visit www.lastingexpressions.me.
