Doll maker inspired by Obama

By Jessica Bloch
Bangor Daily News Staff
January 17, 2009

EASTPORT, Maine — Michelle Obama — a doll-sized version of her, anyway — was wearing a satiny red dress and lying on an ironing board inside a home in town on a recent afternoon.

Doll maker Shana Barry isn’t quite sure whether her Michelle Obama creation will be finished with the red dress, but with visitors coming to the bayside home Barry is house-sitting with her husband, Crash Barry, Shana felt the first-lady look-alike should at least be dressed.

“This isn’t necessarily what it will look like, but I wanted her to be decent,” Barry said with a smile as visitors took a look at the doll. “I’m going to be finishing her in the next couple of days and I’m starting a Barack Obama in a tuxedo, so they’ll be a pair.”
Barry isn’t trying to predict the dress Michelle Obama — the real Michelle Obama, that is — will wear Tuesday as she attends customary balls in honor of the inauguration of her husband, President-elect Barack Obama, as the 44th president of the United States. The red fabric was simply the most inaugural ball-like material Barry had for a doll’s dress.

The Obama art wave has hit, even here in this small village on Passamaquoddy Bay.
“It’s huge. I’ve done a lot of research since I started making the doll and I didn’t realize the extent of the creations that have been made in [Obama’s] honor,” said Barry, who grew up on Peaks Island in Portland. “Obviously there is something about him, and I don’t know if it’s his charisma. He really has mobilized people, and people are inspired by him, artists and lots of other people.”

The man who occupies the office of the president has always been the subject of artists, from Gilbert Stuart’s famous portrait of George Washington to commemorative coins, plates and other common election items.

What has happened during and since Obama’s election, however, seems different from other elections. Graffiti artists are taking to the streets to tag buildings and sidewalks. The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., recently acquired a collage portrait of Obama. More than 100 artists, including Maine resident Robert Indiana, are in the “MANIFEST HOPE: D.C.” show at a gallery in Washington, which opens today.
It’s hard for experts in the art field to define the movement, but Barry is just one artist swept up in it.

“Anecdotally, it certainly feels very different,” said Brooke Davis Anderson, a curator at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. “I think it has something to do with Obama kind of becoming the people’s president. All of us want to participate and articulate our support and enthusiasm in one way or another. If that’s making dolls or leaving graffitior making a high-art piece, it’s all evidence.”

Grass-roots movement

While Barry designs, stitches and sews her Obama dolls in Eastport, another artist farther down the Maine coast has given plenty of thought to Obama.
Robert Indiana, an artist of international renown who lives on the island of Vinalhaven, created a sculpture out of the word ‘hope,’ a word that was used frequently by the Obama campaign. Indiana allowed his work to be displayed at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. He also donated sales of “Hope”-related merchandise to the campaign.

The 6-foot stainless steel “Hope” sculpture was installed Thursday at Jim Kempner Fine Art, a gallery in Manhattan.

The works of Barry and Indiana are among hundreds of Obama-related art pieces being documented on at least two Web sites.

Gabriel McGovern, a resident of Portland, Ore., runs www.artofobama.com. As of this week he has posted images and links to 226 works of art from 200 artists, with 150 more waiting to be posted. He posted a picture and link to Barry’s dolls.

“The sheer number and types of artists participating is incredible,” McGovern said in an e-mail. “In many ways, it is as powerful as the artistic preoccupation from other countries with leaders such as Marx, Che Guevara or Nelson Mandela.”

The variety of materials is surprising, McGovern wrote. So are the places where the images have appeared.

Earlier this month, the National Portrait Gallery acquired a collage portrait of Obama by Los Angeles artist Shepard Fairey, which the campaign came to use as the central portrait of Obama. A Fairey image also was used on Time Magazine’s Man of the Year issue cover of Obama, and next month the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston will open the first museum survey of Fairey’s work.

Artist Michael Murphy created a sculpture out of 6,400 nails hammered into the surface of a board which, when set at a certain angle, reveals an image of Obama in the shadow of the nails. He also constructed an Obama portrait out of 2,500 feet of high-tension wire, black enamel and pine. Indiana, Fairey and Murphy are among the artists participating in the “MANIFEST HOPE: D.C.” show.

There’s plenty of strange work out there, too. Obama has been depicted riding a narwhal, a unicorn, and striding through a pink fantasy world.

A graffiti artist in Denver sprayed on a wall Obama dressed in a Chicago Bulls jersey. McGovern’s site showed a stencil that had been spray-painted on a sidewalk in Portland, Ore. Another photograph featured graffiti on a wall in Tallahassee, Fla.
The street-art feel that much of this work has may relate to the way in which support for Obama seemed to spread locally during the election.

“I think it’s because there’s grass-roots ownership in the election of this president,” said University of Maine art professor Laurie Hicks. “When you get this deep-felt grass-roots connection to an incoming president, you might expect more of this kind of imagery to come into being. I’m not surprised by it. In fact, I’d almost be surprised it didn’t happen.”

Super-Obama in Eastport

Although the Barrys have a breathtaking view of the bay from the home in which they’re house-sitting for the winter, Shana Barry’s inspiration for the Obama dolls came to her on a dark and stormy night in early December.

A doll maker since age 4, Barry was working on a new piece when she realized the face looked a lot like that of Barack Obama.

She then set out to intentionally make a Barack Obama doll. It took a few days — a single doll now takes about a week — but when she was finished, Barry made an Obama dressed in a dark suit with a red tie and leather shoes.

Barry put a listing for the doll on the Internet auction site eBay, where it sold for $100 to a buyer in Illinois.

McGovern linked his site to Barry’s dolls, and she was recently contacted by the Financial Times of Germany about a mention of the dolls.

Barry has since completed an Obama dressed as a superhero, complete with Superman-like tights and cape, and another Obama as a basketball player.

The superhero image is a recurring theme in Obama art, and not just because Obama is apparently a fan of comic books. Barry said she made her superhero Obama before she knew he was into comics. Artist Phil Jimenez recently included an image of Obama on a cover for Marvel Comics’ “The Amazing Spider-Man” comic book.

There’s a risk, however, in superhero-izing Obama before he has even taken office, Hicks said. What if the new president isn’t able to solve the nation’s problems as easily as Superman can leap over a building in a single bound?

“His biggest challenge is the extremely high level of expectations these images represent,” Hicks said. “Having the support for something doesn’t make it happen. Those of us who support him have put on him all our fears and anxiety and hopes for the future. Let’s hope that everybody works with him to make it happen.”

Meanwhile, the Superman and basketball Obamas are still living in Eastport.

Barry is also planning another basketball player doll, a Rock Star Obama and a Hawaii Obama, with a flowery Hawaiian shirt and lei to reflect Obama’s Hawaiian roots. She might also do a whole Obama family, including a dog.

“I think some of my ideas will come intuitively and other ideas will come as I see him as the president,” Barry said.

Barry plans to do 25 Obama dolls in the next four months. She and Crash want to do a tour of Maine this spring with Shana singing and performing her music, and Crash telling stories. Selling a few Obama dolls would allow them to travel and work on their art without doing the odd jobs they occasionally do to make ends meet.

Money doesn’t seem to be Barry’s motivation, however. Like many other artists and more than 66 million people who voted for Obama, Barry said she felt the energy and electricity in this election.
“I think he encourages people to be hopeful and positive rather than fearful and passive,” she said. “And right now we have a lot of economic doom and gloom, and having a leader who is positive and energizing is important.”

Barry’s dolls can be found at www.theshaggallery.com.

(Copyright 2009 Bangor Daily News)