The Bird Doll

Seemingly without carrying anything extra nor lacking anything.

「喜歡看鳥兒在天空飛,如果幸運地有鳥在頭上飛過,會一直看一直看。燕子的飛行狀態,經常跌跌撞撞,速度很快。」參考燕子的體形去製作的布鳥兒,連著一條纖細的棉線,能掛在窗前、垂掛天花下、或作嬰兒床上的吊偶。每一趟當微風吹過,胖胖的鳥兒都會晃動,或偶爾旋轉,順著又有時候逆轉。

“I like to look at birds flying in the sky, and if by luck, one flies above my head, my eyes will follow all the way.” Swallows often dive, swoop and bump their way through, at a very high speed.” This bird cloth doll, which is modeled on swallow’s body shape, is attached to a thin cotton thread, and thus can be hung by the window, from the ceiling, or on a baby crib. Whenever there is a breeze, the chubby little bird will always swing, or at times rotate, in clockwise or anti-clockwise direction.

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常以插畫家身分出現的Furze,其實也常製作布偶。多是動物或人物,也在工作室看過她用茶染的布製作的、有眼睛的馬鈴薯布偶。她的人偶常擁有某種「鈍感」,帶點笨笨而讓人情不自禁喜歡。若是依照真實人物造的,往往能活現當時人的神髓。但這隻布鳥兒則完全沒有任何看得見的表情,就是軟綿綿、素淨的,好像沒有加添什麼卻又沒有缺少。

Furze, who is frequently featured here as an illustrator, actually often makes cloth dolls as well. Most of them are either animals or human beings. At her studio, I have also seen before a potato doll with a pair of eyes, which she made with tea-dyed fabrics. Her dolls often carry a kind of “insensitiveness”, and look a bit stupid, and one will naturally be overcome with joy seeing them. Those which are modeled on real-life figures can always capture their essence vividly. However, this bird doll has no visible facial expressions whatsoever, being soft, pure and clean, seemingly without carrying anything extra nor lacking anything.

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好奇是怎樣造出來的呢?就像是不受干擾、從一而終只專注某個東西、然後用手比劃、去描摹、去揉搓出鳥兒的形態。

「幾年前,有段時間很愛打坐,閉眼出竅的時候,我會在天空飛,看見前所未見的山脈、河川、樹林,這些彷如前世遺留下來的風景,一直往身後移動,由於眼前風景太美,時常一下子便驚醒了。近年再沒有打坐了,而這飛行的記憶卻一直留了下來,有時更會在夢境裡出現。」

是鳥兒的記憶植入了腦袋,或更像是滑進人的感覺裡。用腦袋思考,還是很難出現純粹的東西呢。還是如孩童般單純觀察,心中的鳥兒。

「『 純粹』是我在造布偶這件事當中,漸漸想達到的呢。」

Out of curiosity, one may wonder about the creation process. It would seem it has been made with unwavering concentration from start to finish, during which the shape of the bird was drawn, traced and kneaded.

“A few years ago, there was a time when I loved to meditate. With my eyes closed and my spirit being freed from my body, I would find myself flying in the sky, and before my eyes were mountain ranges, rivers and forests that I had never seen before. Such landscape seemingly left over from the last generation kept passing me by. The scenery was so spectacular that I would often jerk awake before long. I no longer practice meditation in recent years, but this flying memory has stayed with me, sometimes even making appearances in my dream.”

Has the memory of the bird been implanted inside the brain, or more like, it has slid into one’s feelings. It is very difficult to come up with something pure by thinking with the brain. One should rather simply observe, as a child does, the bird inside one’s mind.

“ ‘Purity’ is what I want to achieve, gradually, in this process of creating dolls.”

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