one of my cloth art dolls

Today I thought I might show a picture of one of my cloth art dolls. This one was made about 7 years ago and is called "Binta", which is an African word meaning "woman". The body and headdress are cloth and fibre, the face was sculpted from polymer clay and painted. The freestanding figure was about 60cm high.The doll was sold to one of my students during one of my trips to the USA.

I was very passionate about cloth doll making from the mid 90s until about 2 years ago when I returned to making 2 dimensional images.

After an extremely cool December - apparently the coolest on record for 50 years with an average daily high temp of only 22.6C - we are finally getting a taste of the more customary weather for this time of year. Today was 33C. I am 52 years old so have now spent exactly half my life in Australia, as I emigrated  here when I was 26 years old from my native New Zealand, and it is the only year I have had still had 2 blankets on the bed right through to New Year day!!