Ths Story Behind....The Tiny Worlds

There is something really creepy, yet mesmerizing about dollhouses and the miniatures that inhabit them.  More fascinating, however, are the people who spend their time creating such teeny dioramas. It’s not like a familial, benign hobby like knitting or darning. People who create Tiny Worlds tend to have “inside-out” perspectives. When one sets out to create a three-dimensional scene out of found materials, as you’ll soon see with Carol Ann Pretzel’s “My Twig Fairy Houses” or the warped recycled shadow boxes from kitchi-kitchy, he or she creates a story of details. Each item in the Tiny World has been positioned to invite the viewer to sip on the “Drink Me” bottle in Alice In Wonderland and shrink into their mad little world.

My Twig Fairy Houses
Carol Ann Pretzel
pardonmyfrench.wrfr.gmail.com

“Once upon a time a fairy entered my life. She identified herself as Mystical Magical French Fairy Queen and eventually revealed her name as Lucinda or Lulu. I made this primitive shed roof hut and all the furniture from twigs—from small branches I found on the ground—cuttings from my lilac and forsythia branches and various natural items and other things I found and recycled. I saw many other beautiful, elaborate fairy houses online, but knowing that fairies are also attracted to nature, I knew a home made hut from nature’s materials would certainly please Lulu.”

kitchi-kitchy
Lacy Simons and Jared Paradee
www.kitchikitchy.tumblr.com

These two shadow boxes are simple slide viewer worlds that developed over the course of about three years. They started with varying backgrounds according to new additions to our slide collection. Sometimes selections are made from a 1950s souvenir collection from Hong Kong, sometimes they originate from tiny paintings we’ve made ourselves on old Ecktagraphic write-on slides, or sometimes it comes from just pure blankness. Eventually the viewers were disassembled and small vintage toys were added, i.e. soldiers, cowboys, and Indians. Every part came from junk shops, antique barns, recycling centers, etc. They aren’t on display in our house as art with a capital A-R-T, per say, and the collaboration on them has been completely unspoken and without any particular direction or intention. They’re more a nod to the larger dioramas we want to create, and as a portal into weird and changeable little worlds.