Conscious Creations /
Hilary Jean Tapper works meticulously to handcraft dolls as precious works of art as well as a means for healing.
Handcrafting dolls as a means for healing
In some traditional cultures there is no one word for ‘art’. It is not that art doesn’t exist, more so these cultures believe that art is so all-encompassing in our everyday experiences of the world that one specific word to describe it all is not enough. Hilary Jean Tapper is one such individual that embodies this embracive living of art.
Listening to Hilary speak, one immediately comes to an inner sense of wonder. A wonder for who we are, who we were, and who we are becoming. Born in Auckland, but spending her teenage years in Brisbane, Hilary, now 27, started her childhood explorations of art through drawing, painting, dance and drama, and then as a teenager through film-making. Attending an emerging international baccalaureate creative arts school in Queensland from 15 to 17 years old, a teacher spotted her talent and worked with her flourishing camera skills. This started Hilary’s journey into film-making. Winning film awards from the age of 14, she loved the avenue that film-making gave her to ask the difficult life questions, and portray those questions in an artistic way.
‘I’ve always been a seeker,’ says Hilary. ‘I’ve asked myself some deep questions and I found that film-making was a great way to explore the answers to those questions.’
After a time studying Hindu theology at the University of Chester (but based in Belgium), her combined skills of film-making and Hindu theology took her to India, where she was invited to be a cinematographer and editor for a film production on women practising Bhakti yoga.
But there was something missing.
‘I had friends, supportive family, and a great job, but I was struggling with anxiety and depression,’ confides Hilary. ‘Film-making was taking its toll. It was stressful and draining for me, plus I was spending too much time editing in front of a computer screen. I knew I couldn’t keep going like that.’
Enter centre stage: dolls. Hilary loved dolls from an early age. She had dolls as a child but as most other women can probably relate to, the dolls drifted away from her life as she started to explore the world on her own. It was only when facing a physical and mental crisis in her life that she returned to dolls, and the wisdom they brought her.
So as if by some sort of calling, Hilary woke up one morning with a strong need to make a doll. ‘That came from deep within me,’ reflects Hilary. Using her travel-sized pocket sewing kit and cotton balls for the stuffing, she made her first doll. With two embroidered dots for the eyes and a line for the mouth, the doll instantly had a character, a being.
‘It may sound crazy, but I felt alive again,’ beams Hilary. ‘The child within me had come back. In a sense I had experienced my own re-creation as I created that doll.’
Dolls have an incredibly long and colourful history. They may even be the world’s oldest toys. Traditionally having been used in magic and religious rituals throughout the world, dolls have evoked multiple meanings for people. The
earliest documented dolls go back to the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. They have been made as crude, rudimentary playthings from a wide variety of materials such as paper, corn, clay and wood. Equally they have become elaborate works of art. From basic rag dolls to detailed Russian stacking dolls, there are many examples of how the doll as a healing image can be used to help process grief, loss, trauma, or gender identity.
For Hilary it was the doll-making process that was the therapy.
It is the sense of the inner child that Hilary is trying to kindle in her work. ‘There is an innocence and playfulness to childhood. By getting back to this place for some of us, we can really get back in touch with our essence and let down the masks that we have created for ourselves,’ reflects Hilary.
So Hilary set about making more and more dolls. She and her husband returned from India to Christchurch and Hilary started selling her dolls online at felt.co.nz, at the Lyttelton Farmers’ Market, and at the General Collective Market in Auckland.
‘People would come up to my stall and just stand and cry,’ states Hilary. ‘One lady came up to me and after looking at my dolls said that she hadn’t felt that way in years.’ It’s this remembering and awakening that is so powerful a force for Hilary.
And her theory isn’t just hyperbole. Dolls have been used for people in therapy as a means to retaining their power of companionship, awareness, and safety. Dolls let us stay in the world of our imagination with all the potential and possibility that it contains. For example Hilary tells me about doll-making being used as a therapeutic intervention to help ease the emotional distress of a woman who was caring for her terminally ill mother. Equally children find solace in storytelling with dolls, based on the principle that when we tell the same stories over and over again they no longer have the power to frighten us. Hilary saw the power that art has had on her own healing. So she has begun studying towards a Master of Arts in Art Therapy at Whitecliffe College, Auckland, and will soon be practising as a clinical arts therapist and arts-based researcher.
‘As children we have dolls as transitional objects as we develop from being together with mother, to being apart from mother. The doll can help with this transition, provide a comforting friend for self-soothing as well as embodying our inner voice,’ clarifies Hilary.
Relating to her own difficulties as a teenager, she hopes to focus her art therapy interventions on this group. She is already teaching doll-making classes for ages 12 and up in Christchurch.
‘My first experience of depression was as a teenager. People tried to help and offer me solutions, but it just wasn’t helpful. They wanted me to talk about my feelings but I couldn’t find the words to describe what I was feeling inside.
No words touched the heaviness, the sadness inside. If I can reach out and help teenage girls deal with their own experiences of anxiety or depression, I hope to become the person for our young people that I didn’t have when I needed it most,’ reveals Hilary.
With Hilary’s first arts therapy work placement soon to start in a school in Christchurch, she is looking forward to commencing this important work.
Hilary has a range of 10 Courage Doll characters for sale on her website and at felt.co.nz. Each doll is made using a hand-woven Indian cotton fabric called ‘khadi’, then coffee or tea to dye the khadi a variety of skin tones, local New Zealand wool for stuffing, and all made on Hilary’s foot-powered sewing machine. She also offers custom-made dolls. And with these custom dolls come the amazing stories.
‘One doll I made for someone who has spent most of her life in hospital. I put a lot of courage into that doll,’ she grins. ‘Another girl was autistic and was starting school. Her mum wanted her to have a “pocket doll” that she could carry around with her for inner strength.
‘I used to be a little embarrassed to call myself a doll-maker. But now it’s totally a part of me. I put so much of my heart into each doll.’ And this is Hilary’s dream for others. To give ourselves the permission to do the things that we have always secretly wanted to do – especially allowing ourselves to get creative again. It can just be for a couple of minutes a day, but Hilary believes it could change your life. ‘Creativity allows us to connect within, listen to ourselves and express our spirit, our heart, our uniqueness. My wish is for everyone to have this,’ smiles Hilary.
From a dark space of hopelessness, Hilary and her Courage Dolls are on a beautiful compassionate journey to bring hope and endless delight to those that they meet along the way.
‘If I can reach out and help teenage girls deal with their own experiences of anxiety or depression, I hope to become the person for our young people that I didn’t have when I needed it most,’ reveals Hilary.