Scraps!
Sometimes you make a thing and it reminds you that you are skilled.
You can simply look at it.
You take it in without all the chatter of your mind telling you what you could have, should have, done better. You show it and accept complements without adding disclaimers.
My third sculpture, the Anxiety Rabbit, is one such at item for me. He is born from writing I did when I decided it was time to move back to Madison…but he’s also evolved from that.
The Anxiety Rabbit
And last week Scraps became that sort of finished work for me.
Scraps, the Patchwork Girl of Oz.
The Patchwork Girl, Scraps (sometimes called the Ragtime Girl), is a fictional character created by L. Frank Baum. She appears in Baum's seventh Oz book titled The Patchwork Girl of Oz.
One cover from The Patchwork Girl of Oz as illustrated by John R. Neill
I loved this character as a child BUT was wary of creating her.
Why?
Because like many characters created for comic effect written and illustrated “at a certain time” by white folks…she is very much a minstrel character.
She’s often written as one and in the John R. Neill illustrations most connected to the books she’s depicted with minstrel/blackface nods: the white gloves, white outlined eyes and exaggerated mouth shape.
So I was stumped on how to celebrate the joy of being a child reading her for the first time (and identifying with her whimsy, playfulness and joy) without creating an object that contains the same objectionable tropes…while still being recognizable as being HER?
The Patchwork Girl of Oz as illustrated by Dick Martin
The Patchwork Girl of Oz as illustrated by Dick Martin was my starting point.
HIS looks like a Patchwork Girl who is confident, stylish, and might be silly and playful but isn’t a buffoon. She’s got comedic chops, great timing, and would crack you up over drinks…alcoholic or otherwise. She’s only the butt of the joke when she wants to be.
That’s where I wanted to take her. Hopefully I have.
It’s not for me to say if I’ve succeeded in avoiding all minstrel tropes because I’m a white creator.
I’ve already written about what a technical struggle it was to start her and why she languished for 3-4 years untouched.
But now all I see are the skills that I’ve gained in that time…Even skills I gained two weeks ago struggling to paint a dress for my TNBC Sally.
So without disclaimers I just present her here, for you to enjoy.
