From Voodoo to ‘Youdoo’ Dolls
Last year, the Huntington Museum of Art had a stunning exhibit of Haitian art and a lecture on voodoo art. Because I love the spiritual dimension of art, that exhibit and talk have stayed on my mind. And as the artistic mind often takes awhile to culminate into a tangible product, several months later I have been drawn to creating voodoo dolls.
Because I think it’s important to focus on the positive, I’ve done an artistic spin and called my collection “Youdoo Dolls.” They are symbolic reminders of how we each need to heal parts of our lives and we can send ourselves healing thoughts and prayers. It’s the reverse of a curse… But when I researched voodoo dolls I found that originally they were made for a positive purpose: to send healing prayers to an area of a person’s body where the pin was stuck. As in many religions, positive ideas can be corrupted into negative ones. Hence the focus on cursing people by using voodoo dolls.
I’ve made meditation dolls before, and this is just a version of that. They’re a symbolic reminder of things we want to work on or be healed from. Or they can just be art you hang on the wall! Either way, part of the cool thing about making art is turning conventional ideas on their head and reinventing them in new ways.
Ouch, I just felt a pain in my side… Kidding!
