Making dolls has been the most constant aspect of my life since I was six years old. I believe that I was born to do this. I was born in the South-Western Siberia, Russia in 1982 and fourteen years later immigrated to Vancouver, Canada along with my immediate family: Mom, dad and two younger sisters. Here, I graduated from High School in 2001 and then from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2006 with a Bachelor of Fine Art.
I fiercely resented the institution for the first couple of years into my degree and to this day still harbor residual disappointment and bitterness towards the program, which I feel didn’t teach me enough. Despite its shortcomings however, I’m able to appreciate its contemporary approach to art education, as it was crucially instrumental in the development of critical thought and conceptual aspects of my creative process. Because I felt that ECIAD wasn’t teaching much of anything other than abstract theories and thought development without any applicable and concrete, professional skills, I decided to take some independent jewelry courses on the side to apply that knowledge to my doll art practice. It turns out I love learning, because ever since then I try to take at least one jewelry course a year to learn something new and broaden my horizons. I believe that the secret to beautiful and engaging artwork is looking outside of a particular medium for inspiration and bringing other aspects into it. The reason that there are so many ugly and boring dolls out there is because people who make them look to other dolls for inspiration and continue to regurgitate what they see, thus making the same doll over and over and over again.
Creating a visual narrative is the most intriguing way of articulating my ideas and a doll is a perfect medium because of its potential for such visual story. My strong tendency for escapism has made the make belief narrative of fairy tales very appealing as a context for my dolls. What interests me most about fairy tales is the implicit and often explicit violence that lies just beneath the surface of the magic.
Image courtesy of Cisley
I fiercely resented the institution for the first couple of years into my degree and to this day still harbor residual disappointment and bitterness towards the program, which I feel didn’t teach me enough. Despite its shortcomings however, I’m able to appreciate its contemporary approach to art education, as it was crucially instrumental in the development of critical thought and conceptual aspects of my creative process. Because I felt that ECIAD wasn’t teaching much of anything other than abstract theories and thought development without any applicable and concrete, professional skills, I decided to take some independent jewelry courses on the side to apply that knowledge to my doll art practice. It turns out I love learning, because ever since then I try to take at least one jewelry course a year to learn something new and broaden my horizons. I believe that the secret to beautiful and engaging artwork is looking outside of a particular medium for inspiration and bringing other aspects into it. The reason that there are so many ugly and boring dolls out there is because people who make them look to other dolls for inspiration and continue to regurgitate what they see, thus making the same doll over and over and over again.
Creating a visual narrative is the most intriguing way of articulating my ideas and a doll is a perfect medium because of its potential for such visual story. My strong tendency for escapism has made the make belief narrative of fairy tales very appealing as a context for my dolls. What interests me most about fairy tales is the implicit and often explicit violence that lies just beneath the surface of the magic.
Image courtesy of Cisley
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