NIKI ULEHLA: Toys + Jewelry

My favorite toy is a wheeled horse from Czechoslovakia. It was my father's. The paint, once red, is now fading. It is simple and nearly without features. I attempted in this group of work to cross toys with jewelry for three reasons: because I want more wheeled toys to exist, because technically they have a lot to share with each other, and because I am sick of having to chose jewelry over puppets or vice versa.

I do believe that toys and jewelry are very similar. They are of a similar scale. This is my favorite scale. Even a little smaller is good. And since I don't wear jewelry very often, they are both objects to me. Toys and objects to populate a world: this is my goal and desire. But when the ladies and the men wear jewelry, they populate their world which is their body. To have an adornment on your form: this is why I love the apple trees in San Francisco. They have the most beautiful lichens. So what you do is this: you see an apple tree, you check if there are fruits or flowers. You can see this from a distance. Then, you have to get close. And there are beautiful orange lichens on the bark. And this is the tree's jewelry. This is what I like about when people wear jewelry, that you have to be close to a person to see what it is.

There are a few technical things that I want to describe. The joints on the ebony jewelry are the same as I use for jointing a marionette. I exchanged the materials that are traditional for each. The faces of the men are of mica. I believe them to be faces in profile, some are turned away more than others so you just see the shape of their hats. (The paint is china paint so have dry fingers when you hold the toys.) The wood that is not ebony is basswood. This is what I normally carve marionettes from and I like it very much.