Monika-Monica Mechling: 1997

In 1989, after years of creating elaborately costumed cloth dolls, I found I could no longer let a desire I had to move on with my work rest. But wait, no, it was not ‘resting’, this desire to take what I was doing with cloth and costuming to a new level. It was screaming inside of me to let it out.

All my formal art training was in two-dimensional work… drawing, watercolors and oil painting. Now I sat at a table with clay in front of me, and with a vision and a desire to not only be able to sculpt a face, but also to be able to capture movement in the torso, and make the figures look as if they were alive. For four days I barely moved from my work area. Day and night I labored to create some semblance of reality with the clay, some encouragement that sculpting was the right direction. I needed to further realize my desire to articulate, not only my love of fabric and costuming, but also my admiration for the female face and figure and what women express in their movement, their dress, and in their essence as sensual loving creatures.

This blog is about vision, growth and gratitude for an amazing life. It’s about reality and life’s journeys, about inspirations. It will take you where my restless soul and drive has taken me, not only with my dolls but also my being. A retrospective of my life and work as a doll artist.

I hope you enjoy.

Monica

monikastudio@gmail.com

http://www.monicamechling.com/

MOVEMENT

There is movement in my life right now…a constant humming of alteration inside and out.
Changes…some voluntary, some unintentional, creating fresh accountabilities, forcing me to balance the ever-present flow of thoughts and actions that are taking place as I evolve into another faze of my existence.
Just when life was safe and known…
Just when I had settled in, to rest, to nest within a comfort zone…
I start to look around, restless and bored, eager to begin passages again…
To know the unknown…
There is movement in my life right now.
I’ve stirred the pot...
There is nothing more that I can do but settle in among its transformation…
And live within the adaptations of its growth.

DAY'S END

The sun is setting in the studio.

A draped figure, a woman’s dress-form costumed in a garment designed to fill the humor and the moment of another night, standing tall and silent now a few feet in front of me, is slowly disappearing in the darkening room. The wall clock next to it has not chimed the hour in over a year, has not moved a minute past 7:58, will not, until I choose to bring it back to life again.

Dolls stand silently on a bookcase. Books are stacked in piles on the floor. Everything in this room was put into it with intention, yet as it all fades into the anonymity of the night I wonder why…

What need is there in me to pervade upon the uncluttered areas of this studio… and in its empty moments of unproductive time?

Why do I hold on to the past when my reason for existing seems to be only for the future?

What comfort is there in the memories…

WRITER'S BLOCK

It is a quiet afternoon. The weather, the sticky hot and still conditions that have haunted the summer for much too long has finally broken, the air conditioner is turned off, the windows are at last open to the distractions of the street below, and to the gentle wind that lightens the room with its dance.

My studio is at a stop. The only sound coming from its viscera is the tapping of my fingers on the keyboard of the computer. A cat sleeps at my feet. A telephone silently lies on the table next to me.

Yet in my head there is a flurry of activity…

My mind dances one way, stops, looks around, turns and then dances in a new direction. It skips and runs, then suddenly stops, confused with it purpose, and its final destination. It plays at seeking out the depth of its existence and, when hesitant at its ability to dig into such insightfulness, shutters and lies down, unable to justify the journey that it feels is so imperative to take.

Confusion, hysterical obtrusions and innuendos, thoughts with or without intention, straining for reason. All this is mine as I try, sitting in the stillness of my room, to form thoughts into cohesive significance.

Why?

That I do not know. I have a very wonderful and full life. There is plenty of purpose to who I am and what I do. My reputation has been built and stands well with an art that brings me great satisfaction. So why do I have this insatiable need to write? Why is there this necessity to beat myself up constantly, verbally, in order to place words on paper?

How many writers have queried the same thoughts? How many readers want to hear over and over again the frustrations of unknown authors? It would be better for me to just linger on the subject that introduced this piece…

My studio, and the long hot sticky summer…

There are gaps among the pages
Empty blanks
Unfillable by words
Bright revelations, dark and silent
Thoughts imploding at their worst.
These the poets, dead and buried
Laugh at…
Crazy hell on earth…
Same old meanings…different verse.

Searching heaven on my knees now
Shattered secrets left unheard
Cries of cravings
Desperation
Of the moment and the curse
Words unnerving
Words unstable
Words of wisdom
Words destroyed

All the meanings when unable
Leave
gaps
among the pages
unfillable by words.

1997

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