Episode 2: Entry #009 Joshua David McKenney

The Artidex is a multimedia archive dedicated to documenting artists and creative individuals through signed Polaroid portraiture, long-form conversations, and short films. At its center is a growing physical binder archive, where every featured artist becomes a numbered ENTRY preserved like a rare collectible card. Inspired by the idea of collecting artists like rare Pokémon cards, each entry exists to preserve not only an artist's work, but the humanity behind it, creating a tangible record of creative lives as they unfold over time.

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For ENTRY 009, Gina sits down with artist, designer, and doll maker Joshua David McKenney, creator of Pidgin Doll and a longtime friend and collaborator. Together, they reflect on Joshua's artistic journey, the creation and evolution of Pidgin Doll, the formative years of their friendship, and the winding creative paths that have shaped their lives as artists. The conversation explores creativity, identity, artistic reinvention, and what it means to build a lasting body of work over time.

If you enjoy thoughtful conversations about creativity, independent artists, and the stories behind the work, subscribe and follow along as The Artidex continues collecting, preserving, and supporting artists, one ENTRY at a time.

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Follow Joshua David McKenney
Instagram: @joshuadavidmckenney
Pidgin Doll: @pidgindoll

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You're listening to the Artodex podcast. I'm your host, Gina Frey, the creator of the Artodex Project. And for those of you who don't know, the Artodex is an evolving multimedia archive and philanthropic art initiative documenting artists, musicians, and cultural influences through Polaroid portraiture, long form interviews, and collaborative storytelling while providing direct support and creative grants for artists. Today I'm speaking with my good friend Joshua McKenney, the creator of Pigeon Doll, a fashion doll and visual universe encompassing multiple mediums of self-expression from illustration and sculpture to digital media and stop motion. And Joshua and I go way back. Way back. Like 12, I think 12 years now at this point, which is so so crazy to think about how fast it flies. So this conversation probably gonna feel a little bit more like two old friends catching up as opposed to a very formal interview. And I'm gonna try to also go over topics that I know about, but other people might not know about, so that you can speak on them a little bit more. And also, this is one of my first interviews, so just like bear with me as I try to go through this. But thank you so much for agreeing to do this. It means the world to me and for having me in your beautiful home. Oh, I'm so incredible.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

I'm so happy to see you again, Gene. Before we even begin, I just want to give a shout out to like what a um supporter you are of artists, but also just me and my career. You know, I think we'll probably talk about it a little bit, but you've uh introduced me to people and opportunities and projects through multiple phases of my evolution with Pigeon doll. And um I just really appreciate you and everything that you uh have done for me personally and then for just the arts in general. I think that I think that's really amazing what you do.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

You inspire me so much. I just like want to share you with the world. I think you're such a treasure and such a magical gifted person that I will show you to anyone who will look at anything I'm showing them.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

So thanks.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

I appreciate you. Um okay, so I wanted to start with kind of just like a general background. Like, tell me a little bit about where you grew up, what you were like as a kid in general, but also like maybe particularly touch upon like creatively as a kid.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Sure. Uh so yeah, I I I moved around a lot as a child. I was born in San Francisco, but my family moved to Michigan, which is where my parents are from, uh, a few years of my early life, and then we moved to Florida, uh, where I lived until I was nine. And then we moved to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, uh, which is where I spent my teenage years, and then I moved to New York City uh for college and stayed there until I moved to LA, which is where I live now. Um, so I've been around the country. Uh I was always a very creative child. My mother has a lot of artists in her family, so she recognized my um interest in art very early on and always encouraged it, which I'm super grateful for. Uh, I was also raised very conservative with very strong gender roles. So from a very early age, I showed interest in gender nonconforming things. Uh, in particular, just femininity has always fascinated me. And while I was always allowed to draw uh whatever I wanted, and um I was grateful for, I wasn't really allowed any other sort of like gender play. I wasn't allowed to experiment with dressing up, with dresses externally. Yeah. Playing with dolls, feminine toys. Uh we're all very discouraged uh for the most part. I mean, every once in a while, like, for example, like my mother gave me a set of like Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy dolls. And I didn't care about the Kermit doll. I only loved Miss Piggy. Just Miss Piggy. And but I became so infatuated with Miss Piggy that they both went away. So, like there were small moments in my life where maybe I had a doll, but for the most part, they were very forbidden. And um, but I was allowed to draw. And so I've been sort of drawing and depicting uh women and femininity all of my life without any sort of knowing as to why I was doing it. People used to always ask me, like, why do you only draw girls? And I was like, I don't know, I just do. And it wasn't until I like became an adult and started really reflecting on it that I was like, oh, this is a I'm I'm I'm reflecting on ideas of gender and my relationship with femininity. Um, and the only outlet I had was art, and it kind of became my life and my career because of that.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Yeah, and you're like you're almost expressing something that wasn't allowed to be expressed, and that was like maybe the only channel through which you were able to actualize and express that part of who you were.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Yeah, for sure, for sure. And again, I was completely unaware as to why I was doing it. It's just just this love of beauty and glamour and femininity and gentleness that I needed to, I needed to express somehow. And drawing was what was accessible to me and also something that I loved doing. And uh yeah, so it just kind of like led me into my like teenage interests. I became interested in fashion and fashion magazines, and I would draw a lot of the pictures from fashion magazines, and that's how I kind of got into that whole world. There was before it had been like fairy tales and princesses and that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

And was there a specific magazine you remember being particularly iconic for?

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Oh yeah, the harper's bazaar was my big was my big magazine. I uh I remember I was in the waiting room of like a dentist office or something, and they had Harper's Bazaar and the woman working the front desk. I and I remember it very specifically that um there were there's a photo spread with Kate Moss, and I was just like, ooh, is this beautiful woman? Oh my god, this face. And I was just so hyper-focused on it. And she would save me the magazines then. And so if they were like three or four months old, she would, she's like, I saw that you really like these magazines. And she, this woman started giving them to me. That's amazing. And eventually I I got my own subscription to Harper's Bazaar. Uh, this is in the 90s, so Harper's Bazaar is like uh just a an amazingly very pervasive. Yeah. Uh and but I remember too, like, as I said, my mother was very conservative, and so she would see the magazine sometimes, but she was like, Oh, there's there's like topless models sometimes in like a very fashion context, but but she's like, Oh, this is not appropriate. So I had to like I knew that the Harper's Bazaar would come at like the third week of the end of the month.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Did you hide them?

SPEAKER_00 5:54

And yeah, so I had to like stock, I had stocked the mail slot because we had a mail slot. And so I would sit there and wait for the Harper's Bazaar to come in and run it upstairs to my room before my mom's left.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Where did you hide them? Did you have a floorboard? Did you have a mattress or a pillow? Like, where did it be?

SPEAKER_00 6:07

I I think I could just hide it in a bookshelf at that point. Like just kind of just, you know, as long as she didn't see, like, because she'd be like, but it's this magazine with this beautiful woman on the cover, and then she'd look through it. But like she would treat it like it was like a dirty magazine, but it was just like a it's just like a fashion magazine from the 90s.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

It's so funny. It's like like says straight men are like hiding like disgusting things, and you're just like uh it like so infatuated with just beauty and femininity, and like you have to hide that. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. Um, so you would say maybe drawing was kind of your your first medium, and then you started to find your way like into fashion and clothing as a like a secondary medium.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Yeah, I mean, I I think I've always explored different medium, like drawing is definitely the most accessible because it's it's easy to find the supplies and you don't need a lot of um materials. I I actually did do a few sculptures in high school. I would get like Sculpy or Polymer Clay, and I was always fascinated with the idea of making a marionette puppet. Um I tried it a few times, but I just didn't I didn't have a book about how to do it or anything. So it's kind of making it, and I just didn't have the facilities to do it. But I remember for a long time that was like the ultimate thing that I wanted to make was a marionette puppet. And um, and probably even on a deeper level, it was doll a doll, but I I knew that that would be like forbidden or offbit. Dolls had a real um taboo quality for me, and so I didn't I didn't really like kind of accept that like okay, I like dolls until I was in my 20s.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

So like Puppet felt like almost like a safe gateway in a way, where it was like you're like, I love dolls, but I'm not fully like ready to confront. Did you feel like you were confronting that reality with yourself? Like were you grappling with it, or did you know it internally and you were at peace with it, but you felt like the environmental pressure to suppress that part of yourself?

SPEAKER_00 7:52

I think I was I think I was interested in I I like the idea of dolls and I liked really old dolls. I think most my my concept of what a doll was was mostly like a Barbie or an American girl doll or things that I saw kids playing with. And I would, I was always, especially as a young child, fascinated with Barbie dolls. But um, once I got a little older, I wanted something a little like meatier, something a little more that they felt kind of like um cheap. Substantial. Yeah, like just uh a little more especial, and they felt very mass-produced to me. So I think that was another reason that I I didn't really come into understanding what a doll could be until I was older. I credit her all the time. There's a Canadian-born Russian doll artist named Marina Bitchkova who does these amazing porcelain dolls called Enchanted Doll. And um they're really it's really like the creme de la creme of art doll. And I found her work online and just became absolutely obsessed with her. Um and her dolls are uh very expensive and they're made for adults and they're very kind of melancholy. They're usually like fairy tale characters, but kind of like like a like a like a somber, sad, you know, and they have genitals and they're you know, they're not at all geared towards children. And it never occurred to me that a doll could be such like a uh an adult, sophisticated uh or thought of as art, like we were saying.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

And as soon as I saw her dolls, I was just like, oh, I I need to make dolls. This is this is everything that I love goes into this. And it just had it just until I saw her work, it just had never occurred to me that a doll could be so elevated.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Do you feel like that was like the switch point where it like clicked off in your head where you're like, oh wait, I love drawing, I love fashion, I love sculpture, I love women and femininity. Dolls do accomplish or encompass all of those mediums that I love.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Yeah, for sure. I think it was, I think it was becoming obsessed with her work. Um, I also, you know, through the internet, I started seeing pictures of like uh they were called like Asian ball-jointed dolls at the time, but they're just ball-jointed dolls, but they were popular in Asia. And uh and they were also like geared towards adults and they're a little larger, and they have like sort of, you know, they can have like goat legs or like weird wings or whatever, horns. And uh I was like, oh, this is you know, there's this whole world, like a doll could just be anything. It doesn't have to be just this one type of um like either a fashion doll or a or a plate or a baby doll or whatever. I just became fascinated with the idea of like making my own doll and what could that be? I'd sculpted enough to knew that I had a knack for it. Um, but I hadn't really like developed the skill. So, you know, it it took me a long time, even before we met, and I released like Pigeon as my doll. Um, you know, I there'd been about four or five years before that that I'd been taking like classes at ceramics.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Was this in Parsons that this was happening?

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Uh this is after Parsons. Okay. Um I was working as an illustrator, and I just uh I I knew I wanted to figure out how to make a doll, but I needed to, I needed more skills. I I didn't know about mold making. I didn't know I didn't know enough about the materials, but I'd already finished school. Um, so I actually did take a continuing ed class at uh the School of Visual Arts and learned how to um make molds and silicone and cast things in resin on a very like primitive level.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Um so yeah, I was just like slowly just teaching myself.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

I love that. I also love that about you. I feel like you're such like a self-starter, and like if you have a goal in mind or like you want to create something and there's something you're unfamiliar with or there's some type of barrier, like you will teach yourself that thing so that you can accomplish the expression or McGuyve or something. Like you're so like creative and determined and driven, and I admire that so much.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

I think it's like I think it's like the blessing of like having extreme ADHD where like where like if I'm if I'm not interested, yeah, if I'm not interested in something, I can't, I will never, I won't be able to do it. I can't focus on it. I don't care. Yeah, like don't even talk to me about it. But if I am interested in it, nothing will stop. Like I can I can hyper focus like nothing. Like, you know.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

And I think we were we were also touching before on in a separate conversation, like how normal it is also for artists, probably more so artists that may have ADHD of some kind, to like pick up a project, go all in for a second, and then like need to put it down for a minute and like switch to something else to almost like keep your attention stimulated in a in an interesting way.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Yeah. I think that's a I think that was one of the good things about doll making as a focus, is because it's not just one skill. Right. There's a million skills that go into it. So although it's very easy to like pick up something, not be good at it, and put it down, I could pick up like sculpting something and be like, uh, and like put it down for a little bit, but then like work on my sewing or work on like making a wig or make you know, painting fit. You know, there's all these things that go into it that you can switch your focus. So it doesn't feel like you're just doing one thing.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

It feels like multiple tasks, even though it's the same.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

It's coming, it's coming to the same conclusion. It is all these different skills that go into it.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

You know, I also um would love for you to talk a little bit about the name pigeon, what the context was in which you came across the word and the meaning of the word and how you chose it.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Yeah. So um the idea for like a character name pigeon came to me when I was dating my uh boyfriend at the time, now husband. Uh, he was going to school in Boston and I was on the Fenghua bus uh driving up there, and I drew this picture of like a girl. I was I drew a lot on like transit, so on the subway, and uh, but I was always drawing um in my spare time. And I drew this picture of a girl just kind of rent, just kind of spacing out with a bird wing on her head on top of her hat. And I wrote pigeon, but spelled like the bird. And I was like, oh, that's kind of a like a cute name for a girl, and maybe she's like a maybe she lives in Brooklyn, and maybe she's like kind of magical or whatever. And I I brought the drawing to him and we pinned it to his fridge at the time. And you know, we were like like, oh, what would a girl named Pigeon be like? And it's it's just kind of cute, and it sounds kind of like I don't know, like a French girl or a pigeon or something. Yeah, and uh, we talked about it for a while, and like a lot of ideas that I have, I kind of forgot about it after a while, and cut to like three years later. Uh, I hadn't I had made two dolls already. And I I had my third doll, I wanted it to be um based on like a European fashion doll. I'd tried to make a jointed mermaid doll with all these joints, and it was so complicated. And I tried to make her important, it was and it was just this disaster. I learned a lot, but like the doll itself was just I didn't have the skill set to do it then. So it's like, okay, this time I want to make a very simple doll where it's just about her face. I want her to be as um ethnically ambiguous as possible. Uh kind of feel a lot like Kate Moss. Um I was gonna say that.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

I was gonna say she reminds me of Kate Moss, actually.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

Kate, the reason I love Kate Moss as a model as a teenager is because she just like every photo you saw of her, she looked a little bit different. Absolutely. And sometimes, like, I mean, I became familiar with her face, but the first like you know, month or two of getting to know her as a model, I'd be like, that's Kate Moss too. Oh my god. And I just love that idea of like that chameleon effect. Yeah, that change in your face with makeup. I also left Kevin Aquan, the makeup artist. I would buy his all his books at the bookstore. Uh so I just love this idea of changing your face through makeup. So I was like, I want I want to make a doll where that's the concept. Her face, I want her face to be as changeable as possible.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Um I want the body to be as simple as possible because I had I had these sort of European antique fashion dolls that are with a fabric body, porcelain limbs, and a porcelain head. Uh so I was like, and I want her to, and I want Pigeon to feel like like a like a modern girl that loves vintage things and old things. Um, so having her be made of this sort of old-fashioned construction of a doll, but also uh have modern proportions and her sense of style is like a contemporary girl with like colored hair and whatever, just felt appropriate. But I I hadn't named her pigeon yet. I was like, that, but this is the vibe that I want her to have.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

Which you knocked out of the park, by the way. Like that's exactly that's exactly what when I have to explain her, like what she looks like to people. Like if I don't have a picture on me or like the phone service is bad. I have said, I'm like, she has this weird nostalgic vintage quality to her, and yet also feels futuristic and universal.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Oh, thanks.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Yeah, that's so like what you just described, like is exactly how I she feels too much.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Yeah, good, good, yeah. That's what I was going for. And um Eric, my husband, he's like, Oh, what about pigeon as the name? And I'm like, Oh, that that would actually be so perfect because she was very much also inspired by like the girls that I knew in Brooklyn at the time, like my friends, like Stella and Elena and Absolutely icons, yeah. Yeah, these beautiful, these these just really cool girls that like knew everything about fashion and everything about how things were made. And I'm like, okay, so pigeon is her name, and then Eric is the one that suggested the spelling of it as opposed to pigeon like the bird, it's pigeon like the language. So pigeon spelled P-I-D-G-I-N, which is the way my doll is spelled. It means um, like if two people don't speak the same language but use another language to form their own way to communicate, it's called a pigeon language. So it's like it's like a it's a kind of like a hybrid um like music or math, yeah, but also dolls, beautifully. Yeah. And uh it it just made sense uh for some on several levels because Pigeon the doll become became and is like kind of how I express femininity. And also, and of course I wasn't expecting this at the time, but you know, the she kind of came to life around the time like Instagram was first taking off, and I started posting my doll photography, and very quickly I started to get a lot of fan art and people doing like recreating her makeup and recreating just doing drawings of her, recreating the fashion.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

I have been inspired by her makeup 100%. Yeah, you do the little heart beauty mark and then like tag you on it.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

No, I mean you were there from the very beginning, and I'm sure we'll talk about that. But um, but that was what was sort of interesting about it, and why it became such an appropriate name for the doll, is because I could see like I would make all these different dolls or use the same doll and do all these different looks on it. And what people would um recreate on themselves were the things that I was understanding were becoming like distinctive about her. So like the heart on the cheek, the freckles, the way she'd wear flowers in her hair. It became a language between me and like this Instagram audience, which I'd never had a social media audience before.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

And seeing what was resonating with other people by my photography and this idea of this handmade doll that I was just making by myself in in my basement in Brooklyn became a kind of language and and helped me form like refine the branding in a way.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Exactly, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

And I got to see like I get emotional when I talk about it. It's like it was just the most sincere um way for people to interact with my art. And I just couldn't believe it was happening. And even now, when I look back through like, you know, hashtag pigeon fan art, I mean, social media is such a different thing now, amazing that people don't do post pictures like that anymore. But the fact that I was there for that and that I got so much of it, and just to see how all these different kinds of people and men and women and people all these different sizes and different ages, and all these people were doing pigeon fan art, and it was just the most amazing thing.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

That was such a great era, and I miss it dearly. That was such a beautiful time on the internet. It was I wish we could have maybe stopped it there, but you know, it is what it is.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

I know, I know. Yeah, at least at least uh anytime that there's a loss of something, I would say, well, at least we had it when we did, you know, it's a good way to sort of look at lot loss when things change because it's always inevitable.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Should we talk about when we met, how we met, all of that?

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Yeah, so when I remember you emailed me, uh, and you were I guess managing.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Um I was specifically just doing like PR outreach.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

I because Melanie always had like a legitimate manager.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

But she would say, like, oh, this brand's really cool. And I'd be like, dude, they probably want to work with you. You should just ask them. And I was like, Do you want me to just ask for you?

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

And that so it was very just casual, like helping out a friend, but it was specifically for like collaboratives.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Yeah, we're talking about Melanie Martinez, by the way. Oh, yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Should have given that context.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

Um, I I remember you wrote me and you're like, Oh, I I'm working with Melanie Martinez, and she had just been on the voice. I hadn't, I didn't have a TV at the time, so I hadn't seen it. Uh and but I looked her up and I remember thinking, and but like I think the thing that you didn't know at the time is like I had just launched the Pigeon Instagram account maybe like four months earlier. I had just it was very, I was very early in my doll. My very early in my doll journey. The whole idea behind the Instagram account is like, I want to try to give the idea that this doll exists and that there's this um, like just you know, if I can create the idea of a doll for people, I wonder how people will react to it and sort of take myself out of it as the artist and just have the doll be the representation of the aesthetic. And when you wrote me in when I especially when I like looked at Melanie and I looked at you, and I was like, these are exactly the kinds of people that like I'm hoping I was hoping would resonate with these are cool girls, like um, and I'm really excited that you know, and there were a few other people that reached out to me really early on uh as well. And that's kind of when I knew that like, you know, I'd been working as a freelance fashion and beauty illustrator, and uh I did well at that, but I felt like I kind of hit a ceiling, uh, a wall where like there was only so far I could go with it. And especially because like print media was dying, the internet was taking over. Um, I felt like I needed to pivot and do something else as an artist. And I was like, I think I'll I think I'll stand out more as a doll artist or doll maker than I will as an illustrator. And so having you reach out to me was this sort of like another sign from the universe that like this is the right direction, these are how you're going to like evolve and and start working with the that's so crazy.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Because like I I mean, yes, she fully seemed like fully formed, perceivable, established, like she just like fully existed. So you created that, I guess and it was at the time it was an illusion. Yeah, but it was very it was very real.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

What were you? I mean, this is a question that I've been wanting to ask you. Like, what when you reached out to me, did you know I was a single person, like just a singular artist? Yes, I did know that. And did and what were you expecting versus like what you actually Came when you saw like my basement studio.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

You were just so much more wonderful than I like ever could have dreamt of. No, truly, like foremost, a doll maker is like one of the most whimsical, incredible, and timeless like archetypal things. It's almost kind of similar to a doctor. Like I feel like it's like doctor, magician, shoemaker, doll maker, blacksmith. Like it has this like old feeling to it that's like timeless. Meeting you, I felt who you were as a person enriched her impact so much.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

Oh, thanks.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

And yeah, and I feel like you can when you see you with her, I can feel how she's like, in a way, a very much a reflection of you. You were just even more wonderful than I could have hoped for. You're just so cool and so talented. And it was just really that was an awesome experience. I look back on that time extremely fondly. It was so formative for everyone involved. It was like a very fast-paced um creative surge that everyone was going through. It was Instagram and and Yeah, it was so new.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

It was just like a new way to connect to people, a new way to experience somebody without actually having to meet them. Right. You know, so you could get a sense of somebody. There hadn't, I mean, there was like MySpace existed, and you could pick a profile, but Instagram, you could really cleanly kind of show who you were as an artist, you know, and you got a sense of somebody really quickly, um, which is just felt so fresh and new at the time.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

And I think um we were discussing before it was probably through Doe, and you had made a pigeon that looked like Doe or was like Well, Doe also was called um Kate Mosselot in high school.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

She has a very it's that sort of broad high cheekbones, beautiful, wide-set eyes. Gorgeous. Um, and my friend Shen in New York came over to see my dolls once, and she's like, Oh my god, your dolls look so much like my friend Doe. Uh, you guys should meet. And she sent Doe some pictures, and Doe immediately's like, I need to meet him. And uh so Doe and I started talking, and then we started. I think we came, was this before Pinterest? I guess it was probably around Pinterest still existed then. Uh, we became like Pinterest friends. So we were like, Oh, we actually had really similar tastes and aesthetic. And she came to New York like a few months later, and she came over to see the dolls and uh posted about them. And that was and Doe reposted the dolls, a because it kind of looked like her pigeon looks like Doe. But I made Pigeon before I met Doe. Yeah, like which is crazy. She posted photos of herself with the doll. And it was the first time I'd because Doe had a really big Instagram audience, and um, so I got all these followers all of a sudden, and I think that's probably how you found me as well. Yes, I think so. Because all these cool people found Doe like Newt followed Doe because Doe was cool, and uh yeah, so it was it. That was really an amazing thing that she did for me. It was a great opportunity for people to like see my work. What was funny is like I you messaged me, and I don't remember exactly what you asked, but we planned on a studio visit. Like, let's just meet and see what happens.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

I feel like vaguely, and I could I could very well not be recollecting this, but I think because I had seen Doe with Pigeon, I realized like Melanie also had this very doll-like beauty.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

And so I think I might have messaged you along the lines of, can you make like a pigeon Melanie?

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

I feel like I might have said that because I think the doll thing was very much part of the creative inspiration at the time, was just like dolls in general. So I think I was like, this could be a really cool way to like connect that aesthetic with an actual physical doll.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Yeah. We ended up, I think I did make a little um like uh like one of the necklaces. Yes. And I customize it to be Mani, but I I was still very much forming my idea about like what I wanted Pigeon to be as like a brand and a and a and uh an idea in people's heads. And I love the idea of like community coming together and expressing through this doll. And there was this comic book character from the 60s and 70s that um I used to read the comics of at my grandmother's house. She had like an old box of them or whatever. Her name is Katie Keen, and she was like a fashion model, and she had little comic strips about her life, and she'd do go on dates or whatever. It's something it's it wasn't super progressive, but um but one thing that was cool about her is that people would submit um like young young fans of her would submit fashion designs, and then the artist who created her would create paper dolls every issue of people's designs. So there were these wacky-doodle, uh like Kita Keen in space, and it'd be like this, you know, like swirly hairdo with incredible stars in it or whatever. Just really whimsical designs. And I loved uh I loved that her fashions were generated by the audience. So not all not always, but like that they would sort of let people design for it. It's collaborative. It's collaborative, and I just loved that idea, and I wanted Pigeon to do that. And I had I think I had done a fashion design contest for the first pigeon paper doll that I made, but we were all talking about makeup and our love for makeup. And I think I guess I must have brought it up, but I had sort of Katie Keen in mind. I'm like, wouldn't it be cool if we had people design a makeup look for Melanie and then I make it on a pigeon doll, and then we kind of have it all be. And so we did this like design contest where people submitted, and I did a little like uh template of like it was sort of like a hybrid Melanie uh almost like a Mac face chart. It was a Mac face chart, but of Melanie. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and people could submit their designs on it, so they were all like uniform on the same face, and then we picked our favorite, and then you recreated the one that Melanie chose. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

And I made it was it one or two? Or was that a hybrid?

SPEAKER_00 27:27

It was just it was one. It was just one.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

I remember it had clouds, cloud eyes, and like a moon and like a yeah, it was almost like a paisley moon. Yeah, it was so in it was super interesting.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

I remember it was really hard to narrow down because there were a lot of really good submissions. Um but uh but yeah, so that's how that's what it ended up being is like is this sort of like collab, and we did a little necklace version of it that the person won. And um and yeah, I thought it was just this really fun little thing, but it was yeah, that's kind of how our like we like collaborated, but it was like, you know, I don't think Melanie had recorded any me music yet, you know.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

It was maybe not.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

Yeah, I think it was just um I don't I don't think Dollhouse was out yet. It was just yeah, I don't she had just been on the voice and somehow it came to reaction.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

Beautifully cosmic timing, I think, yeah. Um it was so much fun, and we were also working with uh KT Ferris, um, who's a jewelry designer in Brooklyn, and she was doing like baby doll jewelry. Oh, cool. So that was also like it was just like this very like doll-driven, aesthetic, beautiful era, and I think we were like seeking that out in a way. Yeah, um, so I I just think it's really cool because it seems like everyone was basically starting some some venture in a in an in an interesting way. Like I was, I mean, I didn't know I I feel like I just like made makeup up, like I just invented it. Like I just like don't I didn't know I didn't really get formal training, right? Um, I just like learned by doing.

SPEAKER_02 28:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Um, so through those experiences, I learned makeup, and then like you were kind of just building pigeon out. She was just starting music. Yeah, KT was doing really this is actually one of her rings from that long ago.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Um so cute. Yeah. And so everyone was kind of just like starting up, and it was such like a really cool, beautiful time of a lot of creative growth, and it was really infectious and really cool. She's definitely like a creative tour de force that is unarguable. She's very, very gifted. I know you have a lot of projects you cannot talk about. Do you have any that you can talk about? Or like, could you dream up like a future thing that I know we were talking about shoes a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

What would be something you would love to see happen with her?

SPEAKER_00 29:38

I mean, I can say very generally that I'm working on a big project right now that I've been working on for over a year now. I'm so excited. And um I can't talk about it publicly, but it's uh it's kind of always just been my dream to make pigeon more accessible as a doll. That's all that's what I can do.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

That's the Easter egg. That's it. That's all you're getting.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

Uh that's been amazing to work on. And I feel like once that is a little further along, there's a lot of other places I want to take pigeon doll as well. I would love to do shoes, I'd love to get into cosmetics. Oh my gosh, I'd love to get into storytelling.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

If you did cosmetics, that would be amazing.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

I th there's a lot of places to go. She kind of exists in in a doll form, but really like her true spirit is a muse and and this very specific aesthetic that she comes with. And it just seems to keep growing and expanding. And I I I feel so lucky to be able to kind of help like facilitate that.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

What things about her do you feel like from the very beginning have remained kind of consistent? And like what aspects of her do you feel like have changed a lot?

SPEAKER_00 30:40

It's a good question. I mean, I think she's changed the most over the years, and especially the first five years, just because I got better as an artist and acquired more skills and became a better sculptor and learned about like casting in resin, and then eventually 3D printing, which really did help um the engineering of the doll and like you know, you can sculpt symmetrically. And um so learning to 3D print, I mean, learning to 3D print was its own journey. Like, you know, I was already very far along with my doll making when I decided to teach myself 3D printing um or to sculpt digitally. I mean, which are two different things. There's 3D printing, which is making the thing, and then learning to sculpt in a computer. And I knew that learning to sculpt in a computer would just change everything because you could be very precise about fixing things and whatever. So, you know, I spent basically a month and I was like, this is my job this month is to learn this program. And it really changed everything. So that that really leveled up the way Pigeon looked, learning to do that. And it's when like my friends started saying, like, oh, your drawings of pigeon are really starting to match up with the way she looks as a doll. Um, she really just started to she had that like professional finish. But then, you know, within that, she's she's evolved and changed over the years as I'm like just exploring my artistic expression and trying to see how far I can take the different doll sculpts and still have it feel and be pigeon too to me. So, you know, I did like a chibi version where she's like, you know, has a big head and a little body, and I did uh you know, a version that's like a little curvier, and I did, you know, I've done all these in a version that's a marionette and a version that's a mermaid, and like, you know, just trying to see if how far I can take the pigeon doll sculpt and have it still feel like a pigeon doll and be within her world, yeah, be identifiable as like pigeon. Um, you know, very much inspired by like you know, other artists' brands or other brands where they'll they'll have like this version of Hello Kitty or this version of her, you know, see seeing how far you can sort of take your character. I think only if you can do it correctly, it only makes your your IP stronger.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

I wanted to also talk to you a little bit about because you were talking, I don't know if it was in another interview that you did. It could have been Forbes. Um, and you were kind of talking about like art as intellectual property and making art into branding. I think that that's a kind of an important sort of subject, especially like right now.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

It's kind of I feel multiple ways about it because I don't think you shouldn't have to think of art as branding as an art. That's not really what art is. Yeah, but I think that artists are are constantly being taken advantage of in our society and by our culture. And um, I think it's set up to take advantage of artists. Right. Um, a lot of a lot of the way people consume art, it's usually some artist has been exploited to give you that. Um, the only people that aren't exploited are the ones that know how to stick up for themselves and understand how to uh what intellectual property is, uh understand how to how important it is to keep your IP, to not give that away because I there there's been so many opportunities in um my career where people want me to give the IP of something I'm doing with Pigeon away to their company. And I I will never do that because it's really it's really, really important to understand how uh crucial ownership is to maintaining your brand and for future projects or whatever. Cause as soon as you sign that away, then that person owns it and they could come back later on and like you never know where things are gonna go.

SPEAKER_01 34:08

And that's why I think that it's important for artists to understand art has like a monetary value, you know, and to especially with AI, really, yeah, is you know, kind of also where I was thinking about like the importance of claiming it as like intellectual property and having this like reverence for it and knowing how to protect it and protect yourself is unfortunately it's like become important. I was talking to a another artist um about this, but I hate that artists are now kind of forced to think about all of these things that are just not art related.

SPEAKER_02 34:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

Um it kind of I don't want to say it sucks the fun out of it, but it makes it a little bit more complex to navigate.

SPEAKER_00 34:47

I think yeah, yeah, for sure. No, it's it's definitely it's hard to, it's hard to like maintain faith and not feel disheartened when um when you see the things that people are doing with AI. And uh I mean ultimately like I never remember a pick an AI image. No, I never remember them. I never it never I never see something. I can I can see it and be like, oh yeah, that's beautiful. That has like a 1950s sort of filter on it, and I can see where it comes from. And that's I it's undeniably pretty. I'll say that. But I'll never remember it, and I'll never it never speaks to my soul in the way that real art does. Like when when you see something real, and not all art does this to me, but when a piece of art really moves me, there's nothing like it. And I don't I don't think that's replicable. Yeah, but it's hard because the a lot of the people that buy art, like it's just are not necessarily going with those sorts of instincts, you know.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

It's like it's interesting you say that too. It's just not memorable because if you think about it, like AI is basically sampling from a bunch of like averages, yeah. And it I think it almost like inherently makes it this sort of I don't want to say invisible, but I mean it's not, it doesn't have like the weight of something, it doesn't have a perspective, yeah. It doesn't have a perspective, it doesn't have a personality or like human complexity behind it.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

Yeah, and and that's and it's and and I think I think what's kind of interesting, and I think time will continue to tell, but I I almost feel like like this whole idea of AI art is almost teaching us like kind of what art is, like why humans respond to it and why maybe they they don't to it because it's more than just imagery. And now that now that a beautiful image can exist without a real person behind it, it takes the soul out of it a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

You know, would be a really interesting study is put up a gallery, yeah, and you had like AI art mixed with art made by humans. Yeah, could people walk around and tell and how accurate would they be? I genuinely believe people might be able to tell and like feel it. I'm talking about not artists, I'm talking about like a conventional person who like maybe doesn't make art on their own. I think artists would pick it out immediately.

SPEAKER_02 36:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:53

Um, but I'm saying like someone like my my mom who who doesn't make art. I think I do still think there's some strange way that human-made art is able to communicate some type of soul that can be like perceived, even if it's subconsciously.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

So I I would be real that'd be a really interesting exhibit.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think right now it's art is made with prompts. I think it has a certain look to it. So I feel like it's very easy to spot right now. But I don't know if that will always be the case.

SPEAKER_02 37:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:20

But you know, it's it would be an interesting thing. But I on the other hand, I don't even I don't even want to put AI art on a wall. True.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

No, no, you're so right. Like that's a fair point. But more just like the just some kind of test of the gravity of people know. I think I think people know. Yeah, it's the same way, like you can hold something hand-carved versus something that's machine made. Totally. Like you just you can feel how much soul and effort and time like went into something, and it feels like more precious. Yeah. You can like detect that, even if something that's machine made is like objectively maybe more perfect, or like the cutouts are more like it still doesn't feel as rich and valuable, yeah, as something that somebody worked on. Yeah, and I think we were also touching on a little bit how the core essence really fundamentally is you as a person, and just remaining true to yourself will always kind of embow this like genuine authenticity to how she feels and like everything that comes from her.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

Thanks. Yeah, I mean, she's it's a very personal expression, and um, you know, I've evolved over the past, you know, decade, and so has she. Um, I've learned more about myself as an artist, I've gotten older, just experienced more, and so the doll gets to sort of reflect that a little bit as well. So it's been um it's been a real interesting way to express myself as an artist, but in so many ways, just like the perfect medium for me.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

And thank you so much for making her because she's a tremendous muse for so many people. So I just I'm so grateful that you ended up expressing yourself in this way because it's really resonated with a lot of people. And thank you for doing this podcast. My pleasure and bearing with me because this is my first time doing one. It's a great honor. Big learning curve, and you've been so gracious.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

Well, I'm so excited to see it all. And I wish you all the luck of the Artidex, and it's gonna be really exciting. I can't wait to see all the different amazing artists you profile.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

And I can't wait when we can talk about your future stuff, we'll circle back. We'll circle back.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

Part two.

SPEAKER_01 39:16

All right, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 39:17

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_01 39:17

All right, that's it.

SPEAKER_00 39:18

Bye, everyone.