Christy Lou Sexton is an American artist whose body of work is known as ''Dolls and Dead Things''. She is based in

Las Cruces, New Mexico Las Cruces (; ; lit. 'the crosses') is the List of municipalities in New Mexico, second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico and the county seat, seat of Doña Ana County, New Mexico, Doña Ana County. As of the 2020 United States ce ...

Doll design

Largely this work consists of

doll A doll is a physical model, model typically of a human or humanoid character, often used as a toy for children. Dolls have also been used in traditional religious rituals throughout the world. Traditional dolls made of materials such as clay and ...

s made by combining pre-manufactured

fashion doll Fashion dolls are dolls primarily designed to be dressed to reflect fashion trends. They are manufactured both as toys for children to play with and as collectibles for adults. The dolls are usually modeled after teen girls or adult women, though ...

parts with hand-sculpted heads and occasional other features. All of the costumes and accessories are made by hand without the use of

sewing machine Diagram of a modern sewing machine Animation of a modern sewing machine as it stitches A sewing machine is a machine used to sew fabric and materials together with thread. Sewing machines were invented during the first Industrial Revolutio ...

s or

patterns A pattern is a regularity in the world, in human-made design, or in abstract ideas. As such, the elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner. A geometric pattern is a kind of pattern formed of geometric shapes and typically repeated li ...

. The dolls are inspired by historical

villain A villain (also known as a " black hat", "bad guy" or "baddy"; The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p.126 "baddy (also baddie) noun (pl. -ies) ''informal'' a villain or criminal in a book, film, etc.". the feminine form is villai ...

s, story characters and old legends. There are also entirely handmade

rag doll A rag doll is a doll made from scraps of fabric. They are one of the oldest children's toys in existence. Today, many rag dolls are commercially produced to mimic aspects of the original home-made dolls, such as simple features, soft cloth bodies, ...

s and hand sculpted

figurine A figurine (a diminutive form of the word ''figure'') or statuette is a small, three-dimensional sculpture that represents a human, deity or animal, or, in practice, a pair or small group of them. Figurines have been made in many media, with cla ...

s sometimes produced by Sexton within the ''Dolls and Dead Things'' brand.

Exhibitions

The dolls have been exhibited in a variety of places including the annual Altered Barbie exhibit and several magazines in the

horror genre Horror is a genre of speculative fiction that is intended to disturb, frighten, or scare an audience. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon, in 1984, defin ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sexton, Christy Lou Artists from New Mexico People from Las Cruces, New Mexico Year of birth missing (living people) Living people