"Self-Portrait as Doll"

Opening Reception: Friday, September 5 at 5:00 p.m.
Exhibit remains through September 28, 2014
Jacob Foyer & Mohr Mezzanine
Gualala Arts Center

Self-Portrait as Doll includes photographs and wood-block prints which grew out of artist Wendy Bailey's five-year obsession with Asian Ball-Jointed Dolls. After buying the first of these amazingly realistic dolls, she began photographing them in various surroundings, at local beaches here on the Mendonoma Coast, the Urban Landscapes of San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle, and the beaches of Tahiti and Catalina Island.

Made in Japan, South Korea, and China, in very small batches, with extensive hand-finishing, these dolls are multi-jointed, similar to artists' wooden manikins. This jointing system allows them to be posed in life-like positions. Quite expensive, they are individual works of art. They are not children's playthings. With the dolls, Bailey has become a student of body language, and positions the dolls to reflect different moods and emotions in her work.

The dolls have a very strong association with Japanese Pop Culture, Anime, and Manga. Wendy Bailey has produced two books as a result of her obsession. The first, Resin Life: Snapshots of Asian Ball-Jointed Dolls, is considered by many in "The Hobby" (as the international community of BJD Collectors is known) to be a classic. Then in 2012, Bailey wrote Mary the Doll, a children's book, which uses photographs of a doll with a head that Wendy designed and sculpted as illustrations.

Wendy Reiswig Bailey has lived on the Mendocino Coast for 25 years. She received formal training in drawing, design and painting from California Lutheran College (now University) and graduated with a degree in Fine Arts from Cal-State Hayward (now Cal-State East Bay), studying under Pop Artist Mel Ramos and painter Raymond Saunders. She also spent a year in the Museum and Gallery Design program, specializing in lighting, and has installed a number of shows at the Gualala Arts Center, as well as participating in the hanging of Art in the Redwoods.

Bailey worked as an in-house fashion illustrator and graphic artist in the Bay Area for a high-end fashion company based in San Francisco. She has also done free-lance illustrations for Caltrans, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the California Native Plant Society, as well as other publications.

Specializing in woodblock prints for the past 30 years, her work has won both local and national awards. It has been exhibited in venues across the country, including The Oakland Museum, the Lillian Paley Center for Fine Arts, Walnut Creek Civic Arts Gallery (now the Bedford Gallery at the Lesher Center for the Arts), San Francisco Women Artists' Gallery, and the Buffalo Art Center (Buffalo, NY), among others. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibits at Point Arena CityArts and the Mendocino County Museum, and was included in a Galleria Mesa exhibit (Mesa, AZ) which toured the country for two years.

The Gualala Arts Center, located at 46501 Old State Highway in Gualala, CA,
is open weekdays 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and weekends from noon to 4:00 p.m.
Please call (707) 884-1138 for more information, or email info@gualalaarts.org.

Serving the coastal communities of northern Sonoma & southern Mendocino Counties.