African American Collection

Interviewer: So what inspires you?

Joan: I love to do it. I love beautiful things and I like to create them. They’re sort of like a picture in my mind because it is a basic, a picture in my mind, and I start to put things together and sometimes, like, they just fall together. Something can be laying against each other, and I like the concept of the color or feel or the texture or movement. That sort of inspires me. These particular dolls, in fact this one is me [laughing], what inspired me to make these dolls was that my mother was very sick in the hospital, she was dying of cancer and her thoughts were wandering, and I made this little basket and I put the dolls in and judging from the way they’re dressed, she knew who each one was. She knew this was me because I kind of wear my hair like this and my older sister, Evelyn, she wears her hair like this, and she likes blue. And my sister Nadine, she loves ponytails and she loved pink. And then my sister Margaret [laughing], she likes flowers and whatnot, and then I have my brother [unknown], likes to wear raggedy dungarees, so she knew. This was like her family, so she knew who each one was.

Interviewer: So it was therapeutic for her.

Joan: It was very, the doctor said it was very therapeutic.