PARADE PERSON.

A name and further exploration of a particular type of doll first seen in the piece Endow.

They present with unreadable golden faces, much more metallic-than-usual accented bodies, unusual accessories that further blur the line between their expression and biology than my regular dolls, potentially being discomforting to a regular doll but no doubt intriguing to some.

Maybe to them it’s sort of an uncanny valley, a reminder of how much of them is tied to a material status.

A cyborg’s cyborg.

Though what are these Parade People exactly? Previous works of mine have explored the theme of utilizing oneself as a tool, changing one’s own parts to better grow. Maybe they’re an evolution, maybe they’re an upgrade or maybe they’re something more social or collective. Being a group that’s decided to acknowledge and represent one and other by way of common motifs within their expression. Who knows?

Their design was greatly built upon a further exploration of what inspired the figure in Endow. Ancient Irish design. I had already been toying with other Parade Person designs since Endow but a trip to the national museum of Ireland did much to inspire my direction within the outfit.

I wanted them to have a feeling of being in touch with something the average doll would find odd in a myriad of potential ways. Mystical, spiritual, pretentious.

What better way than to wear symbols seemingly dead if ever a thing aside from pure aesthetics, leaving it to the wearer to define its purpose within culture.

Creating a much more easy to contest bubble around “meaning”.

In reality I wear a triskele. I wasn’t around back when that was made, nobody was, there’s no way to verify the meaning of such a symbol. No way to even tell if it ever had a collective meaning. I enjoy what the Celtic revival has implied about the triple spiral, I also enjoy how mysterious it’s pre-celtic roots as a scribble on cave walls is. From singular to triple, why was a spiral something we just did?

Being something so easy to doodle does it just come naturally? Is there some kind of metaphysical link to something greater?

I have no proof and won’t state that there factually is, however I must admit I am reminded of how much of nature consists of spirals both literally and figuratively. Hurricanes and other storms, our galaxy, DNA helixes, the repetition that leads to change within personal growth, the feeling of things spinning out of control before you hit rock bottom, the growth sequence of flowers.

I wonder if the spiral being such an early “symbol” is reflective of these things even in its most thoughtless form. I wonder if it’s representative of some greater connections to the universe. If not, I’m grateful it got me to wonder, I’m grateful for what was accumulated in my exploration of this symbol. It has functionally become something bigger to me than just a scribble.

I wear the spiral, three of them! Whats that about!? The spirals are now representative of ways in which I’ve perceived the world and its various cycles.

Maybe I’ll define it as being grateful to be and being aware my being will in process effect another and to be aware of this fact while I can.

Maybe this magical feeling is magic or maybe it’s just a feeling. It really doesn’t matter to me at this point.