Cara Carmina's Magical Dolls

A Mexico City native and the creative force behind Cara Carmina, Norma Andreu is showing her magical dolls at Artistri, 5319 Park Avenue, Montreal. As soon as I walked into the shop, I found myself wide-eyed in front of the display. When I think of dolls, for some reason antiques always come to mind, but these are modern and funky, and definitely worth a trip to Artistri to see.

The Dream Whisperers (left) are inspired from the Guatemalan quitapenas dolls. Before you go to sleep at night, you tell the quitapenas your troubles, then put the tiny doll under your pillow, and your troubles will magically disappear. The dream whisperer is the more ambitious version. You whisper your dream to the doll before you go to sleep, and in the morning your dream should come true.

My favourite collection was the Frida Kahlo (right) and Remedios Varo-inspired dolls (left). I learned from Norma that Spanish-Mexican painter Remedios Varo was a friend of Kahlo.The Frida dolls all have a quote from the artist embroidered on the stomach

Click on the pictures to enlarge.


The third collection is entitled No One's Children. These dolls have no parents and are waiting to be adopted.

Norma Andreu's dolls and other découpage work can be purchased at Artistrithe Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, la Librairie de Verdun, Perfide, or directly from her shop on her blog. Check out the prices. I found they were reasonable for the amount of work she has done.

You can join Norma Andreu on her Facebook page. 

4 comments:

Cara Carmina | April 17, 2010 at 12:00 PM

Thanks so much Heather for such a wonderful post about my work!!! :)

Heather | April 17, 2010 at 12:09 PM

No problem! I'm dying to get my Frida Kahlo doll. Thanks for following my blog. All the best! Heather

Jennifer Lonergan | April 17, 2010 at 12:28 PM

Great post, Heather!!

Heather | April 17, 2010 at 12:47 PM

I'm really looking forward to the Steampunk this week. It's very popular on Twitter.

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