Jeanne-Marie Osterman
“I have a feeling the life of these dolls has just begun. ”
— Sandra Botnen, curator
“You don’t have to pay for entertainment, just go outside and look at people.”
Sometimes art becomes difficult - intellectual, abstract and conceptual. Sometimes we turn to outsider and folk art for something more straight forward. And sometimes it’s worth dropping the word “Art” altogether in an effort to experience simple beauty, in all its forms, while recognizing the cultural significance of each and every life.
When in 1979, Frances Lloyd-Osterman followed her husband to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on a three-year work assignment she came alive. Jeanne- Marie recalls her mother teaching her “you don’t have to pay for entertainment, just go outside and look at people.” But Frances went further than that, she began making dolls as little replicas of the people she would see in the marketplace in Arabia and on her travels to Kenya, Thailand, and Cyprus. These were the people that interested her, more-so than the folks back home.
“My mother loved opera and Charles Dickens,” says Jeanne-Marie, describing many of her mother’s dolls as “not particularly happy”. Her mother liked to capture the drama and the suffering of daily life. Time after time, she would express not just the clothing and physical attributes but the burden each person carried in their posture and in the expressions on their faces.
Today Jeanne-Marie Osterman, estimates there are 250 dolls in the collection. Her mother has now passed, and rather than follow exactly in her mother’s footsteps, Jeanne-Marie is a poet. Her first poem titled My Mother’s People, describes her Mother’s fascination with doll making. The poem has yet to be published but can be read below.
As the custodian of this collection Jeanne-Marie has published a catalogue of the beautifully photographed dolls. As the world becomes more homogenized with global clothing retailers, the cultural significant of these dolls inevitably appreciates. Additionally, with the art world slowly opens its doors to make space for women, elevating the often hand-stitched textile works of visionary female artists, I have a feeling the life of these dolls has just begun.
The dolls currently remain whole as a collection and are not for sale, but Jeanne- Marie has produced is a collectible book titled My Mother’s People. The book is available for $110.
Shellback, a book of poetry is also available for $16. Links to both below.
My Mother’s People
c. Jeanne-Marie Osterman, 1999
One day her kids having left home
she picked up a hanger a rag and some paint
and she made Carmen.
Then she took another hanger
and she made Miss Pross.
Then she made Aida sing and Violetta cough.
Then she made Miss Havisham
with
cobwebs in her clothes.
She calls them her people
and she never stops making them now.
After making all her favorite women from operas and books
she started making cowboys and their horses too.
And she made the Native Americans from twenty tribes.
And she made Arabs and she made Jews.
And she made Mexicans Guatemalans and a
gaucho from Brazil.
And my mother's people wear chaps.
And they hold parcels and carry tiny coins in miniature
pocketbooks and purses.
And they hold prayer books with her prayers written inside.
And she made Japanese Chinese Javanese and Balinese.
And she made the Cossacks and the Crimeans.
And she made Danish Swedish Bulgarian and Pole.
And she made the Sisters of the Order of the Holy Cross.
And she made Benedictines Franciscans Carmelites and Israelites.
And then came the Babushka ladies
with tiny baby Babushkas spilling from kangaroo pouches
sewn on the fronts of their dresses.
And she made Indians Pakistanis and a Turk with a fez.
And she glued tiny jewels onto their stuffed foreheads.
And she gave them silk pantaloons.
And she made the merchant she saw on a trip to Tunisia.
And the camel driver she saw in Saudi Arabia.
And the taxi driver who took her through Cairo's slums.
And there are boxes and boxes of Bedouins stacked in her attic.
And there's the lady from Lahore.
And there are shepherds mountain climbers
peasants and there are queens.
And gently gently wrapped in tissue are the Hassidic Jews whose hair
she twirled on a pencil to make curls that bounce down their jowls.
And she cut tiny yarmulkes from of one of her old dresses.
And then she made their wives
with lace shawls, long noses and wigs.
And she made goutras and she made gi's.
And my mother's people carry market baskets,
and they wear gloves jewels and hand-stitched buckskin capes.
And they wear ruffles fringes flounces trims ponchos
and puffed sleeves.
And she paints their faces with their eyes wide open.
And they have thick red lips and piles of hair.
And the hair curls coils and cascades
and it's plaited braided Rastafarian wrapped in buns
and it tumbles tufted jet black white blond
coppery red tendrilled permed and sometimes streaked gray.
And she sews on bushy eyebrows from a remnant of brown yarn.
And she paints on cheeks with a dime store brush.
And my mother's people wear dimples and they wear frowns.
And they have memories worries and they don’t sleep.
Then she looks up their skirts and paints on
tiny bloomers and underwear and then she paints on shoes.
Then she sets them aside not thinking just starting another like you
light another cigarette.
And when I asked her how long each one takes to make
she didn't answer because she doesn't know
and if you ask why she makes them she just tells you
where this one's from and she doesn't make them to keep or to sell
she just gives them away or adds them to the pile upstairs.
And I don't think she'll ever get them all made all the people she's seen
and these aren't the kind of dolls that you hold
and they aren't soft
and they don’t comfort and children won't take them to bed
but each one tells a story.
And each one has a look in its eye.
And each one comes from some place only she's been, only she knows.