Working procedures are a component part of content; if these objects were simple assemblages rather than metamorphoses of matter, stratifications, alchemies, they would not have the same meaning. Method always is a component part of the message, no matter if in the end most of the work remains secret: it is a folly which, however, renders works of art conceptual. In order to achieve one of these works of art I have singled out at least thirteen stages (!), each requiring several days’ work.
1) Looking for and making a SUPPORT, whether it is a box, container, show case or puppet theatre. 2) Making or looking for a FRAME which is an integral part of the work of art and has to be there when I start working, since figures often lean on it. 3) Looking for or producing a BACKDROP which may be an object such as an Indian tapestry or may be painted on wood with acrylic paints. 4) Making the CHARACTERS, starting from a wire core, and then adding a dried-up stucco head: this is then treated with gauze, plaster and polyvinyl acetate adhesive and finally smoothed. 5) Shaping the nylon stuffed BODY, using old tights, interwoven in the fashion of the gauzes on ancient Egyptian mummies: the result is a solid finished shape on which, however, clothes can be easily sewn. I need at least 6 or 7 pairs of tights for each character. 6) Sticking HAIR (made of silk thread found in China or inherited from old aunts or of plumbing flax tow. Sometimes hair has to be set with toothpicks. Then it can be curled or cut. 7) At this point I can paint the FACE, before dressing the character and assembling it with the background. 8) Part of the CLOTHES must be attached before combining the figure with the background and even before having finished shaping it (hands have to be attached after having slipped on the sleeves). Then one can arrange and combine the FIGURE WITH THE BACKGROUND. Some wire ties together the back of the picture and the character, which in some cases is left free to move. This is not virtuosity but rather the freedom to arrange things and change them up until the last minute, lending the whole composition an air of “immediacy”. 9) The clothes are partly machine-sewn and partly hand-sewn right on the figure. Only when the dress is finished, legs or feet can be made. That is why an oven-baked statuette would be useless (besides resulting much more fragile). NUDES or naked parts are hardened by means of a glued-on gauze lining, later processed and smoothed. 10) If the hands have to hold something, the combination must take place even before shaping them. At the end the hand and the object will result as one unique thing. 11) Hands, feet or legs have to be blended with the rest of the body by using glued-on gauze and the hardening process. 12) The figure and the background often have some intermediate layers, papier-mâché landscapes and compositions, or ones made of hardened polystyrene, plastered then hardened fabrics, objects found, each of which has an important story of its own. 13) The whole thing has to be checked, finished off with various applications of little stars, beads and cloth flowers. I have recently discovered I have a great-great-grandmother who specialized in showcases with little holy pictures and bead-embroidered plants.

Maria Cristina Crespo