Featured Seller: WHSKR

The colourful creations of Wellington-based WHSKR will be at Craft2.0 at theNewDowse on 19 July.

WHSKR art doll WHSKR at work Little 'Un

What do you make?
I make art dolls, large and small as well as my beaded brooches.

Your favourite materials, tools and processess:
Fabric and beads, paints and dyes. Fabric I collect in fat quarters to make little bags or some I dye to make Art Dolls. I also realised I had far too many beads in my stash so started to add beads to almost everything including my range of beaded brooches. These are flatter than the Doll pins but just as flamboyant.

What inspires you?
The 1920s for my doll brooches, they are all inspired by ‘pochoir’ prints that used to form the fashion prints of their day with the most beautiful clothes portrayed by complex stencils of the next fashionable evening gowns, car coats and ladies’ hats. For the beaded brooches it’s a combination on the collage and assemblage work of Michael de Meng and the work I see in magazines like Art Doll Quarterly.

Describe your workspace:
Untidy is the kindest word I can use. I get things out when I construct my larger dolls and bit by bit these accumulate around my Sew-Ezi table as piles of books, sketch pads, boxes of colured pencils with a path to the desk where my iMac lurks. It’s hell when the guinea pig gets lost underneath it all – thank goodness for lettuce to tempt him out!

Five words that describe your mind:
Questing, creative, surprised, busy and wondering where our partially sighted cameo kitten Dash has got to.

What are you currently listening to?
You won’t believe this – The Count of Monte Cristo from Audible.com (all 49 hours 42 mins!). I’m a fiend for audio books while I work, the longer the better. If not that then I work really well to ambient music like Jamie Janover, Michael Masley and many of the artists at www.magnatune.com.

Recommend an album:
The View from Olympus – John Psaphas – makes classical music the coolest thing on the planet!

Your favourite childhood book?
Wind in the Willows – Ratty and Mole are a constant delight and Toad deeply irritating.

What are you reading now?
Rita Angus – Jill Trevelyan and The Old Kingdom Trilogy by Garth Nix

Your hero/heroine:
You are not supposed to pick politicians but any women in high office generates admiration. Hillary Clinton in particular for putting up with some absolute rubbish from the US media.

A favourite quote:
Cavie Diem! Seize the day or “Write that down you will forget it by tomorrow”!!

Do you have any pets?
Five cats Peanut, Sooty, Little ‘Un, who came over from the UK with us 2.5 years ago, and Dot and Dash (the two Kiwi kittens) plus Caspar the Peruvian Crested Guinea Pig.

Check out art dolls and beaded brooches by WHSKR at Craft2.0 on Saturday 19 July at theNewDowse in Lower Hutt, or visit her shop on Felt.