Theda McPeek explores beyond the surface
Ever since its transformation from industrial wasteland to vacation destination, the Scenic City has been preoccupied with beauty. Much of the art made here reflects that, but none accomplishes it quite like the work of Theda McPeek.
Her stunning imagery succeeds in being beautiful, but does it in a way that is eerie and slightly morbid. In recent years, she has created a body of work that is composed of drawings, paintings, fiber projects, and a series of incredibly lifelike dolls.
The work is permeated by a certain melancholy, in her words, “A feeling of being alienated in a corporeal body that’s slowly rotting and being preoccupied with death, and returning to dirt.”As a child, she spent most of her time playing in the woods.
“A trope that comes up a lot in my drawings is abandoned, man-made structures in the middle of the woods—it would always seem so magical to me when I found one,” she tells us. “Someone obviously went well out of their way to make this building or whatever so far from easily accessible provisions and now it was abandoned? What must have caused it? That always spoke of a weird mystery ghost story to me.”
Growing up, McPeek was inspired by Japanese animation, and began her career by trying to replicate it. That interest led her to discover several influential anime movies like Evangelion, Akira, Perfect Blue, Tekkon Kinkreet and Mind Game.
She also studied manga artists like Junji Ito and Suehiro Maruo, whose work eventually led her to cult horror films like those of Sion Sono and Jan Svankmajer, where she found a fascination with aspects of body horror in art.
“Those were my main influences when I was younger, and they still are major, but I got to be more interested in gothic, romantic, vaguely paranormal stories like Flannery O’Connor’s ‘The Violent Bear It Away,’ and basically every book or story by Shirley Jackson,” she elaborates. “She is probably my favorite author, and ‘We Have Always Lived In the Castle’ has influenced me in many ways.”
What she loves about those types of stories is the psychological horror, where nothing is definably wrong, but everything is just a little bit strange, knocking the reader off kilter. The same could be said for her paintings and dolls.
“For both things I probably don’t plan ahead as much as I should—I’ll do a loose sketch sometimes, but mostly I just like to see how it turns out on its own.”
She likes to try out different materials whenever the opportunity arises, but for her paintings and drawings, she mostly uses acrylic, watercolor, pencil and gel pens. The works are executed with a realistic style that is reminiscent of the surrealists.
For her dolls, she uses Fimo polymer clay, fabric, and real hair. She started by making dolls that had clay heads, hands, and feet, with cloth bodies stuffed with pillow stuffing and metal skeletons (so they were poseable). Now she mostly does ball jointed dolls—for those, she makes all of the parts hollow.
“I just use foil for the head and body, mold the clay around it, and remove it after baking,” she explains. “For the limbs, any cylindrical thing will do. I use an old paintbrush wrapped in foil, and a little Dremel tool is always helpful for hollowing out any delicate or small parts.”
The dolls are put together by stringing elastic through the body parts, and attaching it to hooks at the wrists, ankles and inside the top of the head. She usually makes the head and all of the ball joints first, so the other body parts can be molded to fit them well.
“Polymer clay is really forgiving, if you make a mistake you can cut bits off or add bits on, and rebake basically as many times as you need to—too much and it can get a bit brittle, but nothing devastating,” she says.
“There are some good tutorials for making ball jointed dolls out there—Most people do a life-size drawing of the doll and work from that to get their proportions right,” she continues. “Like I said, I’m really inspired by subtle horror stories. I like pretty or cute things juxtaposed with horror—it almost makes it more unsettling. I seem to always come back to plants or mycelium growing out of bodies.”
Embracing the beauty of decay, McPeek’s art happily takes us from vacation destination back to industrial wasteland. Though it has an aesthetic that depicts much deterioration, her work continues to grow, and she is developing a new skill set to incorporate into it.
“Next, I want to make a metal sculpture with a clockwork mechanism—I’ve always thought clockwork powered things were lovely.”
See more of McPeek’s work on Instagram @snagglemouth.