$500 SOLD!

CARSON ELLIS - PORTLAND, OR
Untitled

what's the idea behind your dolls?
My boyfriend, Colin, and I went to Russia a couple of years ago and each doll is a portrait of someone we met there.

Their abbreviated stories are (from big to little):

IVAN FROM THE TRAIN: a drunk we met on the trans-siberian railway. He had a glass of mysterious orange liquid that he wanted me to try, which i did, though I still don't know what it was. It was warm and sweet and nasty. In the morning we woke to the sound of Ivan groaning. We had reached his stop and the lady train attendant was attempting to wake him. She sat him up, angrily helped him put on his shoes and escorted him off the train.

ELZA MIKHAILOVNA: a sweet old lady we stayed with in Yekaterinburg; our friend Sergei from Moscow's mother. She took us to an art museum that housed a big collection of pewter figurines. She would point to a little statue of a cat and say, "koshka" and we would nod and say, "cat" and she would nod and point to a statue of a girl and say, "devushka" and we would nod and say, "girl".

GYPSY KID: I have to admit that I never met him, just watched him from afar at the train station in Saint Petersburg. He was moving from table to table, drinking all the beers that people had left behind in their haste to make their trains. He was about fourteen and had big ill-fitting shoes with the toes blown out - like a hobo in a comic book. I couldn't really capture him here because he wasn't at all shaped like a nesting doll. He was so scrawny.

DIMA THE SAILOR: an 18 year old coast guard sailor that we met on the train en route to Irkutsk. We drank vodka with him and a bunch of other people a few compartments down. They sang us Russian songs and, once everyone was good and drunk, they made Dima put on his full sailor's uniform - hat and coat with epaulets and all - and they posed with him for pictures. His belt has the hammer and sickel emblem on it because they haven't reissued that part of the uniform since the fall of communism. He had an extra hammer and sickel sailor belt which he gave to Colin as a gift, inscribing it on the back with ballpoint pen in Russian: "To a good fellow traveler".

SASHA THE BABY: our friend Sergei's baby boy; Elza's grandson. When he got ornery, his parents put him in a little bearskin sleeping bag and wheeled his carraige out onto the fire escape of their Moscow highrise. This made him happy and he went straight to sleep even though it was the dead of winter. He had some kind of skin disease on his face that Sergei said 1 in 4 Russian babies are born with.

red vines or twizzlers?
Red Vines look better but Twizzlers taste better.

what contemporary artists are you inspired by?
Ryan Boyle, Dan Clowes, Henry Darger, Tony Millionaire, that guy Corey from Portland who sculpts tiny landcsape out of styrofoam and paints them green.

last piece of art acquired?
a wonderful collage by Portland luminary, Ryan Boyle.

tell the audience what movie/book/album/website/tv show/magazine you love that most people haven't seen/read/heard?
Movie: "Underground" by Emir Kusturica Album: "It's So Hard To Tell Who's Going To Love You The Best" by Karen Dalton

how did you get to where you are now?
pick-up truck

favorite place in your town?
Forest Park

favorite place in the world?
bed

i would not be an artist if it were not for _______?
my mom and dad