Hennie Koffrie - Netherlands
Hennie Koffrie - the Netherlands - Bio
"Most of the dolls fly like a storm through the universe....distributing the gifts of life, honing the years to a sliver of time............."
During my studies in Color & Design at the Academy in Laren in the seventies I was asked by an advertising company to create some puppets for them. This was in my second year and this is when my dollmaking began. I had long been an admirer of both the theatre and puppet theatre and at this time I had the innocence to believe that in my hands anything was possible.
Since then one of my motives is: When everything is possible, there are no limits to more possibilities. The dolls transitioned from puppets to dolls that make you think. As John Darcy Noble noted: "dreamlike and inturned, they exist in their own dimension, untouched and unaffected by the world outside."
Inspiration lies everywhere. Dollmaking nearly satisfies all my artificial needs in more than one way. Looking at a simple thread over a shadow; the dripping of coffee making its form in the pot. I will use it in current work. A glass tube on a kitchen table ends a few months later in a doll. Old textiles full of forgotten stories..........the doll will give it a new life. And words....from the word freedom alone I could make dolls for years, but as several come to light, the others are stored in my mind. Most of the ideas for my work are captured in a fleeting moment. Contemporary Japanese dolls and the Bellmer story are also inspirations. I don't pretend that they are human beings; I sculpt without limitations and because they mirror my thoughts they must have a transient and fragile look, to hide their power. It takes a long time to develop a piece. My goal is to incorporate the past, present and future into one object. A fascinating process with ups and downs and often quite time consuming.
I am currently working with my own hand-made papier mache and Japanese paper clays which are curiously enough imported from the U.S. For a dollmaker like me who wants to intervene at any time, a real gift. I seal my pieces using an old recipe for Japanese gofun which is an unusual technique for a European. I then paint them with pure pigments. Eventually they are finished with textiles from around the world. All my work is one of a kind and although a work may repeat a theme it makes a complete different piece.
"Work by Hennie Koffrie calls to mind human life, compelled to push on in full awareness of irresistible fate. Koffrie entrust her forms, which appear about to take a flight, and the related wires and wings to a device called a wheel; their introspective gaze secretly follows up a movement that suggest a mechanical contrivance of some sort." Yoko Imai - Crator van het National Museum voor Moderne Kunst in Tokyo