I was initially drawn to these unusual dolls by Karly Perez on Pinterest because of their aesthetic - creepy, macabre, weird… The proportions of the dolls are distorted and their limbs are joined by strings, making the dolls posable but not anatomically correct.
Perez deliberately makes these dolls look weird and disproportioned. I think that this is a visual signature that Perez aims for, a recognisably strange and disturbing translation of characters. It is something that art and doll collectors identify as her 'style' and something that I was drawn to on first viewing them. They're not like anything else I've ever seen - why? Why do they look this way?
The fact that these dolls are so carefully crafted and handmade makes them really delicate and beautiful. Even though these are not drawings, they are illustrations to me. They are shapes and lines, combined and constructed into a model. These creations have the potential to be a lot more than any drawing can be: they can be dressed and repositioned, they can be placed in different situations.
A drawing is only ever one static thing, whereas a model or a doll is many things, depending on how it is captured.
Perez does not make these dolls just for herself or for her artwork, she makes them for profit too. These dolls exist as products and are sold on Etsy. Etsy is an online marketplace for handmade products and artwork.
"All of my dolls are handmade. As such, there are slight imperfections to each one. This is what makes them truly unique and one of a kind. My dolls are pieces of art and not toys. They are not meant to be played with, their hair is not meant to be brushed, and their clothes are not meant to be changed. "
The hand of the artist can be felt in these dolls because every stitch is made by hand. Each doll is hand-painted and like an original painting, these one of a kind dolls are valued in a similar way. Every doll is a piece of her and a physical object from her studio. The dolls are considered as collectables and are sought after by doll and art collectors.
"While each mimic is technically identical, please be aware that there may be very slight differences between individual dolls. This is due to each doll being hand painted and some of the clothing being hand sewn and stained as well as varying imperfections within the cast (small air bubbles, etc)."
She makes casts of her models and creates multiple 'mimics' of the same doll.
I find her process really interesting because she makes unique, one of a kind dolls but also attempts to tackle the issue of time-consuming labour by making these 'mimics'. They could be considered as mass-produced but they are not all identical. They are still all painted by hand and imperfections can be noted from each cast, but this process of making her dolls in a batch is a way in which her practice has industrialised and how she has been affected by working commercially.
Perez's practise has had to adapt to the growing demands of commerce and her products have had to accommodate for such demands too.
These are not dolls, as such. They are not toys. They are miniature artworks and are distributed through photographs or by purchasing an original doll. Owning a doll is owning a work of art.
I'm really interested in the process of image making as model making. Perez has not conformed to expectations as an image maker and she has been really unconventional with her products. The market of 'art dolls' is a growing industry, with many other artists on Etsy creating similar models, but none are ever the same. Each model maker has their own quality of line, their own process of constructing figures and their own anatomical representation. Each artists' model is authentic to their hand and not the hands of anyone else.
Model making is image making but real. It is physical and much more personal than drawing. It is a way of making illustration tangiable.
