1 or 2 Charla Khanna 12" SOUTHWEST PRIMITIVE FOLK ART DOLLS, signed

Description: The dolls are $125 each. You can buy either or both. If you buy just one, please note whether you want the "red" or "teal"-colored doll in the "message to seller" box. I found these Charla Khanna dolls in my late sister's storage area where she kept items from her small crafts store after it closed down. The dolls show absolutely no sign of use, not a fingerprint or stain, not a single loose thread, no loss of color, etc. (There's a gold wire emerging from their backs for hanging, I assume, in case you mistake it for a thread.) Ebay didn't give me another choice between NEW and USED, so forgive me if you don't agree with my decision to list them as NEW. I assume you wouldn't be here if you didn't know something about Charla Khanna. What I've learned about the 80-year-old multi-faceted artist is mostly from Jessica Hemmings in a 2007 Craft Arts International feature, admittedly 17 years ago. With my edits, Hemmings wrote: “These are not, for me, little people,” explains American artist Charla Khanna of the dolls she creates. “They are manifestations of the human psyche, the human spirit.” "Based in the artistic community of Taos, New Mexico, Khanna’s creations seem to reference the rich American Indian and Mexican heritage on her doorstep, alongside more far flung influences such as Asian and Indian motifs. But it is difficult to pinpoint the precise origins of any of these dolls. Each wears oversized feet and a tuft of horsehair atop their heads, but it is the richly decorated surfaces of their garments, as varied as their features are similar, that bring these dolls to life. The results command a language of their own, one that borrows from both near and far, the exotic and the familiar. "Khanna “always knew” she wanted to be an artist and has made dolls since an early age. In college she studied printmaking. But her doll making remained an aside until, separated from her husband and a young daughter to raise, she began to sell both her prints and her dolls. She quickly found the dolls to be her best seller. “It was an accidental career,” she explains with a laugh." "[For her larger dolls] Heads, hands and feet are made from papier-mâché, coated in modelling paste, layers of gesso and an oil glaze. Watercolour is used for the features, followed with a coat of varnish. Hands, heads and feet are produced in batches during three weeks sessions of intensive production. Khanna then allows time to “live with the heads” in her studio, until she feels a head “suggests a direction for what the piece is going to be about.” The first to admit that she cannot visualize these things in advance, she explains that embarking on each project and seeing it through to completion is her only way of knowing what each doll will be like. “I start with very vague notions,” she admits. “I don’t draw things out ahead of time. I haven’t a clue. It is working it out that makes this interesting to do. That is why I do it, to see what will be at the end.” [These dolls, her 12" ones, have a "stuffed" torso, not paper mache.] "But it is the garments rather than the bodies of these dolls that set each apart. During the mid-eighties Khanna took a break from what threatened to be a severe case of studio burnout by embarking on her second graduate degree, this time in Fibres at the University of Michigan. While it was weaving she focused on during this time, the gamut of textile techniques now appear in her work. Occasionally she will employ a patterned store bought fabric, but for the majority of her work she favours embellishing Dupioni silk, although the fabric often needs to be over dyed in her studio because “the colours are never quite the right colours.” "Have the dolls evolved over the years she has been making them? “I do think I am more playful than I was in my youth,” she responds. “I can do pieces about ‘the meaning of life’, but I just did a little piece about a trick frog. That has changed.” Shipping is $6.65 for one doll and only $1 more if you order both at the same time. There is no buying discount for buying both. Thanks for looking!Rick

Price: 125 USD

Location: Mansfield, Massachusetts

End Time: 2024-11-19T21:57:21.000Z

Shipping Cost: 6.65 USD