CHristie Carter
The Space In Between
ARTIST STATEMENT:
This exhibit documents the “Blooming of Babette”, as she comes to her own in the world. Babette, a rabbit, is an anthropomorphic doll. Along with Bruno the dog and Zelda the cat, she has joined Pat and Madge to create a uniquely blended family.
The provenance of Pat and Madge is clear—they were created in a factory in Japan in the 1920’s and shipped to the Rochester, NY household of my mother as a little girl and then passed down to me. Babette, Bruno and Zelda, on the other hand, are new immigrants. (They hope to stay in the country—they fear deportation). Their provenance is unclear. They are “Frankendolls”.
They have an arm from here, a leg from there, and a head that is painfully wired to their body, wherever that came from. In short, they have an identity crisis. In this exhibit, Babette shows that she is up for the struggle. In the process of Babette’s posing, she begins to narrow the space between her traumatic origins and her life now as she blooms.
Pat and Madge have been star actors in several photographic series:
Pat and Madge Discover Sugar
Pat and Madge Come Out
Winter Adventures of Pat and Madge
Sharon Hope Weintraub writes about these antique dolls:
”The antique doll market is being flooded with what I call ‘Frankendolls’, new dolls cobbled together out of old excavated parts. Since the reunification of Germany, collectors and dealers have been excavating doll parts and figurine fragments from the massive dumps behind the former doll factories in the Thuringia area of Germany, such as Hertwig and Company and Limbach. Some dealers are piecing together these pieces, creating new dolls out of old parts. I call these creations ‘Frankendolls’, because they are made up of buried parts and brought back to ‘life’. The enormous dumps of the old porcelain German factories were largely made up of rejected or defective parts tossed out before dolls were actually assembled.”
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ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Christie Carter, a retired archivist, has lived in Vermont all her adult life and currently resides with her husband Kevin in Montpelier. Photography has been a part of the fabric of her life on and off since she was a teenager. She captures family, nature, and -- inspired by the dark days of winter-- still life.
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All artwork is available for sale.
For pricing information contact
Christie Carter:
czcarter@comcast.net