Dolls for Friends was recently approached by the wonderful art/design duo, Jolby, to contribute some custom plush pieces to their upcoming gallery show, Home Is Where You Make It. The February show will be held at Subtext Gallery in San Diego during the month of February and early March 2009.

Jolby asked us if we would be interested in creating some plush versions of the characters in the show to help bring another layer of depth and texture to the event. Once we read over the backstory/premise for the show we couldn’t refuse. We were hooked:

“Jolby’s work takes us on the journey of a boy named William who, after suffering a great loss, leaves his familiar town of Seaside to discover what “home” really means inside the depths of an aging forest. Throughout this story we are introduced to a detailed world filled with odd characters, illustrious patterns, vibrant colors, and hand-rendered type.”

Who could resist being a part of that? Coupled with the fact that Colby and Josh are two very talented (just take some time to check out their work at Tangible Worldwide) and cool guys (not to mention that they get what we do) PLUS the fact that we live for the collaboration made it a must.

So there it is. We will be part of the upcoming Home is Where You Make It show in February. We will be doing updates and sneak peeks of the pieces as we progress through this wonderful project.

It arrived today. Wrapped in plastic. The one, the only Computer Arts Projects-all the way from jolly old England. Not just any issue, but THE Character and Toy Design Issue. The issue that features none other than….DOLLS FOR FRIENDS!!!

I am telling the truth, by the way. Some of our little guys were featured in the November issue of CAP! And it’s such a pretty magazine too. Glossy pages, fancy colors, and really cool artists-people much cooler than us! We are truly honored and blown away to have been a part of this awesome publication. It’s funny because we really stress if our sales are down, second guess our work, and are always critical of everything we make. Not that this changes anything, but it’s really nice to think that somebody likes us!

We truly love what we’re doing, you never know how things are going to turn out, and we have plenty of plush orphans lying around to prove it! But in the end if you get to make something that makes you happy, and makes someone else happy too-it doesn’t get any better.

A huge thank you to everyone that continues to support and befriend us! Especially Kate Evans at CAP for including us in such an awesome publication!

Cheers!

Erin’s take on the CAP interview can be seen on his website, webclique.net.

This is little Nizumi. She has been living in my sketchbook for a mighty long time, and now she’s here! Yay! Our goal these days is to grow, and widen out in our creations. And little Nizumi is a prototype, an experiment in a way. But once I made her, I loved her, and couldn’t bear to part with her. She is now a permanent part of our personal collection, keeping guard on my bedside table, perched atop of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Erin and I love what we do because we have a lot of freedom which allows us to create whatever we feel like! But what I love the most, and hope we never lose sight of, is creating pieces for ourselves and our family. We own many pieces that will never be duplicated, copied or mass produced simply because they went from sketchbook to sewing machine to us. And that is just so awesome! Personal projects are the lifeblood of any creative endeavor, and we are indulging ourselves this summer!

And in the end, we are hoping to emerge even craftier, plushier, and far more interesting than ever. Until then…

Craft Flickr Pool Weekly Roundup (June 14, 2008)

National Hot Fudge Sundae Day (via nowpublic.com) – We were asked to contribute a photo of a recent trade (between us and the fab Love and a Sandwich) to a story on National Hot Fudge Sundae Day.

Meet Sam and Pete (We made their “Plush Goodness” section)

Tinymeat (Friends are good to have)

Pop’s Book Shop

Thanks again to everyone for your support.

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.

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?