Through June 8, an exhibition at Florida Craftsmen offers a glimpse into a world rarely showcased by local art venues — that of the art doll. All Doll’d Up! The Magic of Art Dolls features painstaking sculptures by 14 artists whose creations may be playful, but whose artistic intentions are dead serious. In the exhibit, more than 50 dolls display impressive craft in clay, fiber and mixed media, including seed pods, shells, beads and paper. St. Pete artist Calan Ree’s wide-eyed, forlorn beauties — adorned with delightfully bizarre accessories like a bone-and-feather hat — evoke Victorian street urchins, while “diva” dolls by Joan Allen of Gulfport embody a certain late 20th century feminism through elaborate harlequin-like outfits, crimson manicures and miniature biographies.
While several of the exhibition’s artists hail from outside Tampa Bay, the abundance of local talent on view is worth getting excited about. Among the standouts are Chomick + Meder, a St. Pete-based husband-and-wife team who have been making art together since they met at an art supply store in Chicago in 1978. With the exception of an exhibition in 1997, the couple, Chris Chomick and Peter Meder, have not shown their artwork in Tampa Bay, channeling their energies instead into member exhibitions held around the world by NIADA, the National Institute of American Doll Artists, Etsy, and their own website, chomickmeder.com.
I recently visited their home studio in St. Pete to learn more.
Shortly after meeting, Chomick and Meder were hired through a friend to bring their art-making skills to bear on a television commercial project: a stop-motion animation of the Dutch Boy Paints mascot for Sherwin-Williams. The couple designed and built a posable 6-inch-tall figure of the blonde, blue-clad Dutch Boy — who lives today in a china cabinet in their living room — and filmed a frame-by-frame animation of the doll wiping dirt off a painted wall. The job launched a career in model-making and special effects for Meder. In 1986, the couple moved to St. Pete and worked for an advertising firm for a decade before semi-retiring to become full-time artists devoted to making dolls and automata, mechanical dolls that move when cranked or otherwise powered.
Chomick + Meder’s dolls are almost all modeled after invented characters rather than real people. Memorable creations include Dr. Messmore, MD, a servo-controlled automaton whose hands crank a hypnotic, spinning disk; Marguerite Oiseau, a half-woman, half-bird who perches on a silver pedestal; Ava Simone, a corseted lady with a translucent tattoo of flowers across her collarbone; and a series of comical babies including the perpetually surprised Chloe (on view at Florida Craftsmen). All are slightly creepy, somehow indefinably off, but in a way that elicits fascination or laughter more than unease.
“We both have commercial backgrounds, so there is a feeling that we want to please. We don’t want to scare [collectors] off,” Meder says. “It’s not like you have to make something that matches their couch, but you at least have to make something …”
“… that they feel comfortable having in their home,” finishes Chomick.
Santa Claus meets Tim Burton in the couple’s garage studio. Machines used to shape every imaginable doll part sit atop work tables, including a rotating mold that outputs lightweight doll heads from an ounce of liquid resin in three minutes. In the tightly packed space, Meder designs doll armatures and gears to power moving automatons; Chomick carves doll faces into resin clay and constructs miniature garments on sewing machines. Literally every piece — from joints to jackets — is handmade.
A pin board adorned with inspirational photographs and prototypes-in-progress reveal the couple’s creative process, much of which hinges on figuring out how much motion, or implied motion, will imbue their creations with the semblance of life. “We learned a lot from the Muppets. Henson would always say that people said, ‘Wow, Fozzie blinked,’ because people fill in the movement. So you kind of get away with a lot of stuff,” Chomick says.
“A lot of times people think the eyes [of our dolls] move, but they don’t,” Meder says.
Over the years, Chomick and Meder have discovered little rhyme or reason as to which figures sell and which don’t. (Celebrity collectors who own their work include actress Demi Moore and workout king Richard Simmons.) Chomick made the duo’s first baby on a whim, crafting a one-off piece with an oversized pacifier and a swirling curlicue of hair that a collector immediately snapped up.
“Then people kept asking about it. We made another one and then a few more, and a few more. Everybody liked these weird little babies,” Chomick says.
As a consequence, the couple regard their own instincts with a grain of salt. New figures are made without much concern about whether they will make money.
“Every time we think it’s the one, it isn’t,” Meder jokes.
“That’s why it’s best to just make what you love,” Chomick adds.
“[Every doll] will find its buyer,” Meder says. “There’s a lot of them that we’re really upset we don’t own anymore.”
