Feminist Paper Dolls and Thinking about Harry Patch

Entourage (Or What Was Harry Patch Guarding?)
Mixed Media Collage on acetate

In March 2012, I dedicated a whole month to creating paper dolls of those folks that I though of as feminist role models.  Each person was a personal preference of my own- regardless of whether they self-identified as feminists (which I know, I know is problematic and somewhat dis-empowering...but)

March 2012 was a grueling month.  Making the dolls was a labor of love and I was very raw after doing it.  I didn't feel like it was complete when the month was over but I couldn't go on right then.

Now, I'd like to revisit those personal icons.

A few years ago I did an assemblage suite about war and the angel of death.  It was right around this time when Harry Patch died.  Mr. Patch was the last Tommy-Boy of World War I to die in 2009 (at the age of 111 and 38 days).  He was quiet and refused to speak publicly of his time in war until 1998 when BBC One approached him to do a documentary on WWI.  He revealed himself to be a furious pacifist and railed against the rationale for ANY WAR.  He talked about being afraid and wanting just to go home.  He begged to leaders to work at diplomacy.

"When the war ended, I don't know if I was more relieved that we'd won or that I didn't have to go back. Passchendaele was a disastrous battle – thousands and thousands of young lives were lost. It makes me angry. Earlier this year, I went back to Ypres to shake the hand of Herr Kuentz, Germany's only surviving veteran from the war. It was emotional. He is 107. We've had 87 years to think what war is. To me, it's a licence to go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn't speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table. Now what is the sense in that?" (Harry Patch)

This evening I will add a Harry Patch doll to the collection of folks I made in March 2012.  And I hope he would have been pleased.