 Newspaper View
 Print
 Email
 Comment
 RSS
 Bookmark
If you would like to bookmark this article you will need to Login to your tulsaworld.com account
close
Valley of the dolls
Digital, color and dolls: Lavada Nicholls finds 'Lost' objects
Photographer Lavada Nicholls collected dolls in Belgium, France, England and Tulsa for this project. "I guess what appealed to me about these dolls was that kind of macabre aspect," she said.
By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer
Published: 11/15/2009 2:23 AM
Last Modified: 11/15/2009 5:26 AM
Maybe it's the eyes.
Most of them are a brilliant, unnerving blue. Most of them are open wide and staring directly at you — although the ones where the eyes are aimed off in some other direction can be equally creepy.
After all what in the world could these things be looking at?
The simple fact is, these eyes look at nothing. They can't see anything. You don't need some fictional shark-hunting ship's captain to tell you that a doll has dead eyes.
Still, just try to look away.
"I guess what appealed to me about these dolls was that kind of macabre aspect," said Lavada Nicholls, the photographer whose show "Loved and Lost" is made up of 15 large-scale photographs — each measuring 4 feet by 5 feet — of dolls that have been discarded.
This will be the first show of Nicholls' work in her hometown in more than a decade. For much of that time, she and her husband Peter have been living in Europe — first in Brussels, now in a small village in France that Nicholls drolly calls "the French equivalent of Coweta or Porter."
Nicholls took her first courses in photography at the Philbrook Museum of Art in the 1970s, and during the 1980s and '90s her images were everywhere — from fine art galleries to the covers of long-gone publications such as Uptown News.
"I'm not doing any commercial work anymore," Nicholls said, "because it would require me getting a work permit and going through a whole bunch of things that seem like they would be too much of a hassle. And also, where I live now is pretty much 'Middle of Nowhere, France,' " she said, laughing. "Maybe if we still lived in some place like Brussels, which had a real, thriving arts scene, I would think differently. But right now, I'd rather concentrate on work that makes me happy."
Color her aggressive
Last year, Nicholls had a show of black-and-white portraits of the people who live in and around the village of Lisle-sur-Tarn, where she and Peter live, at the local art venue, the Musee Raymond Lafage.
Her recent work in black-and-white is notable for a kind of tenderness. But when Nicholls turns to making color images — especially digital images like the ones that make up "Loved and Lost" — a harder edge shows up in her photographs.
"I've only recently embraced the whole digital photography thing," she said. Her last Tulsa show, a 1998 exhibit simply titled "Red" at the M.A. Doran Gallery, featured work created through a range of "old-school" photographic techniques, such as photogravure.
"But it's so easy to get lulled into that immediate gratification with digital," she said. "It's appealing to be in the moment when making a photograph and not worrying about screwing up by using the wrong speed film or whatever."
Nicholls shot the "Loved and Lost" doll pictures in color because she wanted the images to be "aggressive."
"And big," she added, laughing.
The series was something that developed over time, she said. Over the course of a couple of years, Nicholls had gathered up cast-off dolls in Belgium, France, England and Tulsa. They range from one of the series of Bratz dolls to anatomically correct male and female dolls that Nicholls found in Europe.
"But I really hadn't thought of them as being a show until I got a call from (Aberson Exhibits director) Kim Fonder, who said she was interested in doing a show of my work, and did I have anything."
As for her own favorite dolls, Nicholls said that would have been a "Ricky Jr." doll, based on the character in the "I Love Lucy" TV show (which could lead one down a whole other vaguely disturbing line of thought about reality and fantasy and dolls based on actual people, but we will restrain ourselves).
"I don't know whatever happened to my Ricky Jr. doll," she said, a little wistfully.
Maybe Ricky Jr. is, even as you read this, sitting on some shelf, his big, round eyes unblinking as he stares soulfully off into space.
Or right at you.
Loved and Lost
Photographs by Lavada Nicholls
When: Opening reception 6 to 8 p.m.
Thursday. Show continues through Dec.
30.
Where: Aberson Exhibits, 3524-B S.
Peoria Ave.
James D. Watts Jr. 581-8478
james.watts@tulsaworld.com
By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer
Copy Text
Search for this phrase/name
Close
Newspaper View
Print
Email
Comment
RSS
Bookmark
If you would like to bookmark this article you will need to Login to your tulsaworld.com account
close
 |
|
