About This Work
Prints available in the online shop!
The Abstract Dollhouse is an independent capstone project from The Evergreen State College.
The work began in January 2020 with an initial project, Comfort Objects, which focused on the creation of abstract dolls, exploring the link between object attachment, dolls, and the senses. Touch was a core theme, and an important element of each piece. Details from this phase can be seen in the Evergreen Virtual Gallery.
This initial work progressed into the current project, which aims to create a comfortable abstract home for the dolls to inhabit and viewers to explore. Each room is themed around a general color atmosphere, evoking different moods in the scenes. The lines between which pieces are dolls and which are environmental are blurred, blending both into a whole.
Everything in the house is an abstracted idea of what the dolls might want or need. In contrast to the miniature chairs and kitchenware of the typical dollhouse, the objects here are mostly vague shapes that could be viewed with any number of purposes. It’s a different world with unknown rules.
I approached this work in the spirit of the pillow fort: there are objects all around us, and they have potential to unlock. Finding imaginative uses for what was already on hand was a major theme. Some pieces in the dollhouse are miscellaneous objects, while others are my own creations from past and present. Handmade pieces utilize acrylic painting, punch needle rug hooking, ceramics, sewing, needle felting, and metalwork.
This website is built with my coding and design. The online format provides both an accessible viewing experience and a living digital location for an otherwise temporary physical work. It is designed to be modular, and may grow in the future with new additions.
Research themes informing this project include dollhouse history, color psychology, biophilic design principles, theater sets, and picturebooks, among others.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to friends, family, faculty, Spruce, and Sumi.