We were oh, so happy (and very surprised) to see that we received some great press from Portland local and wonderful alternative newspaper, Willamette Week. They recently started a new section entitled The Pocket Shop Shopping Guide. It features cool little shops from around the Portland Metro area that carry hand-made pieces by local and national artisans. One of the first to be featured was Tender Loving Empire (which carries DFF stuff) and included a great great write-up with details about the shop and included an interior shot.

The article also contained a sidebar, which talked about us and some other wonderful, local creators. The highlight was seeing that we were compared to carnage, Frankenstein and Ugly Dolls (the latter being a bitter-sweet reference that comes up quite often lately) all in one paragraph.

The exact wording went a little like this:

If the Ugly Dolls had a rager that ended in carnage, and the splattered remains of the cloth creatures were miraculously reassembled, Frankenstein-style, you would have Dolls for Friends. Strangely, they’re pretty damn adorable and even appropriate for the preschool set.

All-in-all the press was wonderful and very unexpected (which is always a good thing when you stumble upon these types of things.) A special thanks to Eye Pop Art who posted the WW article and included the information about us. And another special thanks to our daughter Mariana who went scouring the net for press recently on us and came across the article.

We were contacted through Flickr a week ago by an editor (connected to affalog) who wanted to do an interview with us for a magazine in China called City Pictorial. We admittedly know very little about the Chinese media, and China for that matter, beyond what we hear on the news. Yet, we do know that China is opening up its borders, relaxing its grip a bit and starting to look to the West for media coverage.

After spending some time talking it over, Jill and I decided that we would like to work with them on the piece. Our reasons were simple; beyond the obvious press benefits we would receive by being featured in this wonderful publication (we did some research on them before committing, and visually, they rawk!), we want to support and contribute to the amazing arts dialogue that takes places every year through the myriad of electronic and printed media around the world.

Overall the piece was wonderfully easy to put together in terms of answering the questions from the interviewer. What proved to be a tad more difficult was the collection of pictures they were looking for to accompany the piece. We had to assemble nearly a dozen high resolution photos of our studio space, the work and ourselves. Some of the photos we had, while others we had to setup and shoot on the fly. We were in a mad rush because we only had a total of three days to put the entire piece together in order to hit the editorial deadline. Yet, somehow we managed to coalesce our work schedules to get everything done in time.

We are not sure when the issue is supposed to come out, but we have been promised that a copy will be sent to us from our new friends at City Pictorial. So, now we wait with baited breath for the arrival of the publication and hope that our answers translated well into a language that is fundamentally more complex, intricate and beautiful than our own. Sadly, though, we might never know unless we can find someone to help us with the translation. Hmmm. Any takers?

In April we’ll be participating in the Buckman Art Show & Sell in Portland. This is a yearly fund-raising event that helps to raise money for arts related programs offered on the Buckman School campus.

Sadly, due to years of massive budget constraints, the Portland Public School district has had to cut back on many of their programs, leaving the non-core subjects (essentially everything other than math and science) on the short list to be scaled back or completely obliterated from the classrooms. As a result, and not too surprisingly, the one area that has seen the most devastating effect has been the arts (both visual and theatrical).

Thankfully, The Buckman School, through a variety of fund raising events, has managed to weather the district’s financial storm and keep the arts alive on their campus. It now sits as one of the only public schools currently offering an expanded arts curriculum in the city of Portland (an amazing fact given that this city has to be one of the most creatively minded cities we’ve ever lived in.)

Buckman’s yearly event culls together local artists to a two day auction and vendor sale in which the school, the arts community and the community at large can gather together, commiserate and through financial support help to fund another year of the arts at the school. And from what we’ve heard it’s perhaps one of the most fun events to take place in the Portland area all year long.

You can imagine how excited we were to find out that our application to participate was accepted. We love the arts, it’s how we make our living, and so this represented a great opportunity to give a little back to what could be the next generation of up and comers (wee-Picasos and picasettes.) For our end of the fund raising, we decided to do a custom piece (Avery) that would be auctioned off during the show. She is a female lamb character who is nearly three feet tall and has to be one of the cutest pieces we’ve ever put together. She is completely hand-sewn because the material we used was new and proved to be a real bear to deal with on a sewing machine.

The wonderful part of this whole story, beyond the fact that we are a part of this great show, is that we were just contacted by the coordinators of the Buckman show and asked if we would donate another five pieces for the gift bags that will be presented to the musical performers at the event.

What rawks, in a wonderfully huge way, about this is that two of the giftees will be Stephen Malkmus (of Pavement and The Jicks) and James Mercer of the Shins (and Flake Music), a few of my all-time favorite groups. Not to mention that Dirty Martini (local faves) and a variety of other great talent will be on hand as well.

We are now getting ready to put together our little loverlies and ship them off in the beginning of April. We will post some advance (whooooo…shhhh) photos once we are done. So… if you can peel yourself away from another set of reruns of last season’s American Idol or Dancing with the Stars, and you’re in the Portland area, please stop by at the show on Friday or Saturday, April 11/12, spend a couple bucks for a worthy cause and say, “Hey!”

We’ll be waiting for you.

We do a random search on Dolls for Friends every so often to see where we might be popping up across the interwebs. Normally we don’t post about where our little endeavor shows up, but every once in a while there are some that strike us as exceptionally cool and leave us scratching our heads.

So, When I came across this post in Spanish on Forest Eyes I was stoked. To see someone sending us a little love in another language was quite wonderful and unexpected. Thank you Forest Eyes for the kind words, and thank you for adding in the translation so we knew what was being said. We were featured on Taggy in Japan a couple weeks ago, which is awesome because we are total anime and manga freaks, but it was in Japanese, so we could not understand anything that was being said. Hopefully they liked us because we get our plush feelings hurt easily. Hee hee.

… to be quite an event packed 2008. Over the past two months we’ve been filling our dance cards by accepting invitations and booking gallery, art and craft shows for the rest of the year. Thankfully, there have been plenty of people interested in doing the waltz with us, so we have plenty of places to be and plenty of work to do getting ready for all the wonderful events coming up. Here is a quick rundown of some of the places we’ll be over the rest of the year:

• March 9 - Crafty Wonderland (Portland, OR)
• April 11 - Buckman Art Show and Sale (Portland, OR)
• April 12 - Buckman Art Show (Portland, OR)
• June 6, 13, 20, 27 - Crammed Organisms Gallery Show (St. Louis, MO)
• October - Plush You (Seattle, WA)

There are still several other shows and some gallery invitations that we are looking to get final confirmation on, but it is looking like a full year will be expected.

Thank you to everyone who has given us the opportunity to be a part of their wonderful events. It means a lot to us to be part of such a great community.

We were so excited when we were contacted by Tender Loving Empire in Portland asking us if they could carry our work. We thought about it for, oh, about 5 seconds, looked at each other and shouted, “Hecks yes!”

We were finally able to get downtown today and sign contracts with the hospitable Bri, deliver a couple of pieces for the shop and to take a look around her awesome store. There is just so much there that you could easily spend your entire paycheck there without even blinking.

Our agreement with TLE marks the first retail space we’re going to be located in, and it looks like it might not be the last. We’ve just received interest from a new vendor that if it works out might take us across the pond to merry old England before too long. Let’s hope.