  Here is a Dangerous Old Dollmaker Slide Show MOVING FORWARD – Possibilities Open Studios + Working Sessions + Focus Processes +revisiting the dolls/stories + new Dangerous Old Dollmaker explorations. I imagine that we start with revisiting The Healing Doll Way Discovery The question is what opens the door to the future – what is next for you, for me and the work. “The Dangerous Old Dollmaker is the woman who has lived long enough to trust what she knows. – and the dolls and her body will be her companions.” And we will be joined by the spirit of Elinor Peace Bailey. The work and voice of Pamela Hastings and other dangerous dollmakers from the past. August 2026 [email protected]
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DANGEROUS OLD DOLLMAKERS
August Open Studios • Zoom Gatherings I’ve created a Dangerous Old Dollmaker slideshow to introduce the concept. What we’ll do together
August Open Studio Dates Wednesday, August 19 — 10:30 AM Thursday, August 20 — 6:30 PM Sunday, August 23 — 2:00 PM All times are U.S. Central Time. Each gathering will be approximately 60–90 minutes, depending on the number of dollmakers attending. Zoom Information Topic: Dangerous Old Dollmaker Meeting ID: 685 787 9391 Passcode: Danger Join the Zoom Meeting Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6857879391?pwd=CpAbRdm9s7UxtzeNtJ7NIvWcr9yhaX.1&omn=84678522370 This is a recurring Zoom meeting, so the same link will be used for each August Open Studio. Optional Payments There is an optional payment to attend an Open Studio. These payments help me cover the cost of my Zoom and Vimeo subscriptions. If you choose to pay, please note the date of the Open Studio you are attending. Optional Open Studio Payment Want a recording? If you cannot attend—or would simply like to revisit the gathering—you can purchase a recording: Open Studio Recording I look forward to seeing you, sharing dolls and stories, and discovering together what it means to be a Dangerous Old Dollmaker. If you want to talk with me further you can email me at [email protected] What is Dangerous Dollmaking I recently shared a short article written by elinor peace bailey. This was intentional, I wanted the art doll making audience to think deeper about the power of making art dolls for change and healing. Dangerous Dollmaking: Memory, Process, and the Refusal to Be Small Clarissa Pinkola Estés names the Dangerous Old Woman as one who becomes threatening to dominant culture not through aggression, but through clarity—through memory, discernment, and an unshakable allegiance to life. She is dangerous because she can no longer be controlled by shame, distraction, or the need for approval. Borrowing this framing with deep respect, I extend it into the realm of embodied art by naming the Dangerous Old Dollmaker—an elder maker whose hands carry lived knowledge and whose work transmits memory, ethics, emotion, and care through form. Elinor Peace Bailey stands unmistakably in this lineage. Elinor’s danger was never loud, although her costuming of her self and her dolls tended to be. It lived in her refusal to accept inherited definitions—of art, of dolls, of authority, of value. In her 1993 newsletter called The Association of People Who Plays With Dolls (https://apwpwd.weebly.com/#/) letter from the editor, she describes reading as a “dangerous activity,” one that disrupts the comfort of thinking as one thought yesterday. This danger deepens when she encounters Gloria Steinem’s insight that women and Indigenous makers were never taught to separate “art” from “craft,” and therefore assumed—correctly—that their quilts, carvings, cloth work, and dolls were art. Elinor understood immediately what was at stake: not taste or technique, but power. She identifies two competing paradigms shaping creative life. One is linear—hierarchical, competitive, obsessed with grading, ranking, and defeating others. The other is circular—spiral, intuitive, relational—where completion matters more than conquest and progress lies in directions not yet traveled. Elinor aligns herself firmly with the second. This choice is foundational to Dangerous Dollmaking. For Elinor, danger emerges when systems insist on control: when critics, judges, juries, and institutions define what counts as art, who gets to make it, and which materials or forms are worthy. Dolls—especially those made of cloth, intended for domestic space, or led by intuition—have historically been excluded, trivialized, or patronized under such systems. Elinor does not argue politely for inclusion; she simply takes the work back. If art insists on definitions that erase embodied, intuitive, emotionally resonant making, then the definitions—not the dolls—are the problem. This philosophy reshapes what a dangerous doll is allowed to be. A dangerous doll is not designed to be cute, collectible, comforting, or compliant. It is not meant to win or dominate. It is a figure that carries emotion, sensation, contradiction, grief, humor, tenderness, rage, and lived experience in its posture, weight, texture, and presence. It tells stories not as surface narrative but as embodied, gathered wisdom—wisdom accumulated through time, failure, attention, and care. Such a doll challenges the very definition of “doll” as harmless or trivial by insisting on its role as witness, teacher, and ethical object.  Elinor’s resistance to control becomes especially clear in her reflections on dollmaking process. Watching other artists speak about mastery and command over materials, she realizes—with startling clarity—that her own work depends on something else entirely: being led. She chooses a process that is loose, organic, experimental, and healing, where the maker does not dominate the material but listens to it. This, too, is dangerous. In cultures that equate authority with control and excellence with discipline, choosing responsiveness over domination is a radical act.
Equally dangerous is her refusal to diminish others. Elinor questions the purpose of tearing work apart, of making people feel small, of narrowing the field so that only a few may remain. She reframes critique as teaching—not coercion—and insists that the role of the artist-elder is to help others realize their own vision, not enforce conformity. “Either we dine together,” she writes, “or we do not dine at all.” This is not sentimentality; it is a structural challenge to scarcity-based creative economies. In this world, dangerous does not mean violent, reckless, or destructive. It means unmanageable by systems that depend on amnesia, obedience, speed, hierarchy, and sentimentality. A dangerous old dollmaker remembers what the culture prefers to forget: the cost of extraction, the truth of bodies, the intelligence of land, the long arc of consequence. She makes dolls that slow time, expose normalized harm, and refuse simplification. She does not make herself—or her work—small, cute, or consumable. Elinor Peace Bailey’s legacy is not a style, a school, or a set of techniques. It is a stance. She shows future dollmakers that danger lives in listening, in honoring intuition, in refusing false hierarchies, and in trusting embodied knowledge. She reminds us that dolls are not small—they are condensed. They hold culture, memory, and possibility. And when made with integrity, they quietly, persistently, reconfigure the world. Look for my next post about upcoming Open Studios about Dangerous Old Dollmaking  Chakra Healing Doll Dear Healing Doll Way Dollmakers, I've been looking forward to gathering with you this summer, but over the past few weeks I've been listening to something quieter than my plans. I've been on an unexpected healing journey that began with a diagnosis of an eating disorder. In November, when I weighed 119 pounds, I began recovery with the support of the wonderful staff at Melrose Center in St. Louis Park, my therapist, Kate, at Sageant Health, and the amazing nurse practitioners at Herself Health. Their care, encouragement, and wisdom have helped me regain a healthy weight and begin a new relationship with my body. As I regained my health, I was eager to continue facilitating and guiding women through The Healing Doll Way. Then another unexpected chapter arrived. Last summer I was diagnosed with a 7-centimeter cyst on my left ovary. My doctor recommended an annual ultrasound, and when I had that follow-up this June, we discovered the cyst had grown and needed to be removed. I had surgery on June 26. While I knew I needed to recover physically after surgery, I quickly discovered that my body was in no hurry to heal. It needed me to rest and "take it easy"—two concepts that have always been foreign to me. I'm discovering that true healing asks for something more than rest and recovery. It asks for my presence. One of the deepest lessons our dolls have always taught us is that we cannot accompany another person into vulnerable territory unless we are willing to accompany ourselves there first. (check out The Ten Questions in Healing Doll Way book) For more than thirty years, I've invited women to slow down, listen deeply, trust the wisdom of images, and allow the dolls to reveal what cannot yet be spoken. Now I find myself sitting in that very same circle as a student. This isn't a detour from my work. It is my work. In the middle of my recovery, the name Dangerous Old Dollmaker quietly arrived. It felt like the next stage of my work. I've been asking myself, What makes an old dollmaker dangerous? I don't think she's dangerous because she has all the answers. She's dangerous because she's willing to stop pretending she does. She notices the invitations hidden inside uncertainty. She stays with herself when the old ways no longer fit. She trusts that healing has its own intelligence and its own timing. Right now, that is exactly what I am practicing. The dolls are asking me to honor the pace of my soul rather than the pressure of the calendar. So I've decided to step away from teaching for the remainder of July, and possibly through August as well. Not because I don't care about this community. Because I care about it deeply. The women who gather here don't simply need information or techniques. They deserve someone who is grounded enough to sit beside them as they discover their own stories. That kind of presence cannot be hurried. It grows from tending my own inner life with the same compassion I hope to offer each of you. These days I'm resting. I'm making peace with uncertainty. I'm listening to my body. I'm paying attention to dreams, symbols, stories, and the quiet language of the dolls themselves. Once again, they have become my teachers. I trust this season is quietly shaping what comes next—not only for me, but for all of us. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your understanding. Thank you for walking this path beside me over the years. When we gather again, I hope to return with a quieter heart, deeper questions, and an even greater appreciation for the wisdom that emerges when we give ourselves permission to heal, to ripen, and to create from what is most true. Until then...Be gentle with yourselves. Listen for the quieter voice. Tend your own inner Dollmaker. She knows more than she sometimes lets on. With love,Barb P.S. During this season of healing, I will be creating a private Dangerous Old Dollmaker membership group and a Facebook group. I know Facebook isn't everyone's favorite place (it isn't mine either!), but for now it's the simplest way for us to stay connected. Let me know if you are interested at [email protected]  Our Lady of Ashes Holding Her Pain Story In 2005 I drove to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and presented at The Wisconsin Art Therapy Association (WATA) and facilitated healing dolls experience. Here is the slide show I presented. At this conference I met Sister Nancy Roboin who invited me to lunch and said, "We're going to work together some day." Ten years later she called and invited to me have a show of my dolls and teach at the brand new art center called Moon Tree Lodge. I said "yes" and that experience and being with Nancy and Sister Mary changed my life. It has been around 10 years since I was there and I would go back tomorrow. If you ever get a chance to take a class at Moontree and meet these two amazing, outrageous Catholic Nuns take it. https://moontreestudios.org/about-moontree-studios/  In 2012, I created the Medicine Doll Project and invited a small group of women to participate in an unfolding exploration of healing, creativity, symbolism, and self-discovery through the process of dollmaking. At the time, I had been developing a working curriculum based on my research, years of dollmaking, and a growing understanding that handmade figures could hold emotional truths that ordinary conversation often could not. I invited women to read, reflect, and make dolls alongside me. Together we followed symbols, stories, memories, body sensations, dreams, grief, intuition, and imagination wherever they wanted to lead us. But what mattered most was never simply the dolls themselves. It was what happened through the making of them.   Something profound happens when women gather with the intention to create, heal, transform, and connect through the making of art dolls. Not to compete nor to perform. Not to become polished or perfect. But to listen more deeply to themselves and to one another through image, symbol, cloth, texture, and form.....and so much more. Over time, the dolls become mirrors, witnesses, companions, memory keepers, talisman, storytellers, protectors, and containers for emotions. When the original project began in 2012, the world was very different. I used Yahoo Groups to communicate with participants and share lessons. The women who joined were entering midlife, and so was I. Over the years I continued teaching, gathering stories, collecting wisdom, and deepening my understanding of what happens when women engage in symbolic dollmaking. Eventually that work became The Healing Doll Way. As I continued to age and teach, another layer of the work began to emerge. My need—and the need I witnessed in other women—to connect, create, witness, be witnessed, and make meaningful art had not diminished. If anything, it had grown stronger.  In June 2026, I am introducing the Dangerous Old Dollmakers Project. It is rooted specifically in art dollmaking, art journaling, and storytelling. The doll is not simply a craft project or decorative object. She becomes a symbolic figure capable of holding what words alone often cannot. Through making her, women frequently encounter hidden emotions, forgotten stories, inner conflicts, longings, grief, resilience, imagination, body wisdom, and parts of themselves that have been patiently waiting to be seen.  Looking back now, I can see that the seeds of the Dangerous Old Dollmaker were being planted long before I had words for her. Six years ago, I began a healing journey when I stopped feeling well. I searched far and wide for answers—a diagnosis, treatment, therapy, something that would explain what was happening to me. I visited alternative healers and physicians within the medical system. There were occasional days of relief, but gradually there were more days of dis-ease. I began paying close attention to my body's persistent language—its sensations, anxieties, symptoms, and signals. Nothing was consistent. There were waves of grief, moments of healing, fears about aging, deep fatigue, and hidden stories that seemed to live beneath the surface of my life. I wanted answers. What was happening? Why was it happening? How could I heal? My greatest moments of relief came in the early mornings when my creative soul would awaken with the name of a doll, an image, or an idea for an art journal page. On those days I felt alive. I made art and could feel creative energy moving through my blood. Then the next day it might be gone. I could barely get out of bed. Eventually, I began losing weight for no apparent reason. A quiet voice inside me said, "Maybe it's an eating disorder." How could that be? Eating disorders happened to young girls, didn't they? A visit to an eating disorder treatment center in Minnesota confirmed what I had not expected to hear. That kind of listening, paying attention, and committing to a difficult healing process changes a person. It has changed me. And it is still changing me. I find myself less interested in polished answers and more interested in what is true. Less interested in appearances and more interested in what lives underneath. I am increasingly drawn toward metaphors, symbol, image, embodiment, memory, ritual, creativity, and the slow wisdom that emerges through making things with my hands. Out of years of living with chronic, unexplained symptoms and receiving an eating disorder diagnosis emerged the words: Dangerous Old Dollmaker. She is not dangerous in the way our culture often imagines danger. She is dangerous because she refuses to disappear. She trusts her intuition. She refuses the pressure to reduce her life into something tidy, pleasing, explainable, quiet, or small. She trusts what can be known through play, imagination, and the creative force. She trusts the intelligence of the body. She trusts symbols, dreams, grief, creativity, intuition, and the healing power of making dolls by hand. And perhaps most importantly, she understands that many women are longing for spaces where the deeper parts of themselves are seen, heart and welcome. She is one of those women. Through deep creative practice, the Dangerous Old Dollmaker learns that she can be:
It has come from experience. It has come from making dolls. It has come from living a life deeply dedicated to seeking and finding truth. That is why I am creating the Dangerous Old Dollmakers Project. This project is an invitation to past, present, and future students who feel called to the path of symbolic dollmaking and embodied creative exploration. The book The Healing Doll Way will be required reading for those who choose to participate. It contains the structure, language, practices, stories, and accumulated wisdom that form the foundation of this approach to healing dollmaking. More than an instructional guide, it serves as a companion for understanding the symbolic, emotional, and transformative processes that often unfold through the making of healing dolls. You do not need to be an experienced artist. You do not need to know how to sew perfectly. You only need a willingness to listen, imagine, explore, and allow the dollmaking process to reveal what is waiting beneath the surface. I do not yet know exactly what form all of this will take. But I know the spirit of it. I know it belongs to community. I know it belongs to women who long for deeper conversations, meaningful creativity, shared wisdom, laughter, storytelling, honest reflection, and the companionship of others navigating the rich and complicated terrain of aging. And I know it is time to gather again. If you are interested in joining the Dangerous Old Dollmakers Circle, please send me an email at [email protected] I am beginning to gather women who feel called to explore healing, symbolism, storytelling, art journaling, and dollmaking in community. I would be delighted to hear from you. One More Thing....
It has given shape to experiences I could not put into words. It has helped me listen to what was happening beneath the surface of my life. It has provided companionship during grief, uncertainty, illness, healing, and change.
The lessons and meanings that emerge through an eating disorder recovery journey are many and deeply personal. Yet one thing seems undeniable: the body has a way of demanding our attention. It asks us to listen. It asks us to become curious. It asks us to discover who we are beneath our habits, assumptions, fears, and stories. Perhaps that is one reason I find myself returning again and again to dollmaking. The dolls remind me that every body carries a story. And every story longs to be heard. |
Barb KobeThe Healing Doll Way Archives
August 2026
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