Susie McGee-Lowdermilk makes dolls. That's the obvious fact, apparent on the surface.
But deep inside, this fragile, incandescent redhead entertains a variety of artistic muses. Her mind hums and bubbles with her own creation, and her dolls are the "next step" in a life of aware, artistic living."Sometimes I sit in my workroom sewing for eight hours at a stretch, and it's magic," she said. "Mark has a study table right behind me, and we are often there together, just working in silence."
"Susie's work is as important as mine," said her husband, Mark Lowdermilk, a dancer turned medical student. "She leads a life of style and vision, and that makes my life of study complete."
McGee-Lowdermilk began making the dolls 10 years ago, and the project has grown into an engrossing cottage industry. "I used to sell them for $65, but the detail is so great, I had to jack the price so I could make something on them," she explained. Her dolls now retail in the range of $200 to $275.
"I invest more in them now, more materials, more antique touches, more artistry. I am surprised that Utah doll collectors are so interested in them, because I visualize them in art collections."
She had just finished firing some heads, regal white miniatures fashioned from modeling clay onto a little wooden cross, from which dangle the finished doll's arms and legs and body, all made of wire wrapped with padding. She can bake the heads in her oven, since they only require low firing heat.
"I begin dressing them from the pantaloons out, then the petticoat, and skirt. I don't know where they will go from there," she said.
In her workroom, cluttered with a thousand fascinating objects, McGee-Lowdermilk picked up a doll with wispy pink yarn hair and a richly brocaded gown, whose beaded headdress originated as jeweled slippers or an old belt; another whose stylish little hat suggested a delicate beaded box.
All the finished dolls have names, but she likes it when viewers comment on something in her creation that she has not seen before. Many of them are black, but not from any conscious dedication to racial equality. "I just like the exotica, the majesty of black queens," she said.
She sees the finished dolls as creatures of the theater, flights of whimsy, and they do indeed suggest costume sketches for elegant period productions.
Almost as much fun as making the dolls is shopping for materials - expeditions
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guided by the artist's second sight, by which she perceives the possibilities in other peoples' discards and junk. McGee-Lowdermilk scouts Salt Lake and San Francisco shops for bolts of ribbons, lace, buttons, gilt, old fabrics, Oriental odds and ends, and a hundred oddities that stimulate her imagination.
Mark Lowdermilk was raised in India and Pakistan, where his father is an irrigation specialist. "Mark speaks the language, and on visits there we find wonderful exotic bargains in the bazaars," said his wife. "Then too, I work at Ec-lec-tic, and sometimes the owner hauls in baskets of stuff from people's basements and attics, amazing things."
McGee-Lowdermilk has added to her output clothing design ("wacky fashion") and pillows - little chic oblongs featuring painted panels by Jody Plant. "Someday I would like to have a small shop with a big couch and serve tea to people who come in," she said. "But for now, what I'm doing is just great."
She's in the midst of a seasonal flurry, preparing to display and sell at the Utah Arts Festival and the Park City Festival - making about 30 dolls in all. Christmas brings another push, but the bottom drops out in January, allowing her to catch up. Besides direct sales, she does a good deal of business by mail, through personal acquaintance and recommendations.
Many will remember Susie McGee-Lowdermilk as a dancer at the University of Utah, then with Mark Lowdermilk, Gary Vlasic and Larry Stensrud in A Company of Four. Though now dormant, the company is still functioning, with a dance happening planned for the first week in October in a big lofty space yet to be found. "Our ideas of dance have evolved, and our style is broader, more cinematic, our own true voice," said Lowdermilk.
"Dancing once a year will be better for us," said McGee-Lowdermilk. "We love to perform but we've dropped the pretense of a structure where you feel obliged to produce a fall and spring season."
Structured McGee-Lowdermilk is not. Was she an artistic child?
"I don't think so," she said candidly. "We moved a lot, even lived in London, but I spent my adolescent years in Seattle, where my father taught economics at the University of Washington. I was a happy child, but I was not into dolls as playthings. I loved animals, I was a rambunctious tomboy. There was always color in my life. I loved dressing up, giving plays, theater was big."
There was plenty of art influence, especially on her father's side; a pack of Bohemians, she indicated - "painters, singers, wacky but down to earth." Her father, who now lives in Mexico, is a painter; her grandmother, who recently died at 90, was a window decorator for major department stores. "She molded beautiful heads and turned out fabulous creches," said McGee-Lowdermilk.
"When I entered Western Washington State College in Bellingham, I was definitely on the hippy side. I took care of animals, fed goats, ate organic food. I took my first dance lessons there when I was 20 years old, then went on to the U. of Washington. But it didn't have the kind of training I needed, so I decided to come here, and it's the best thing I ever did!"
Not least because she met Lowdermilk, and she's not surprised at his turning to medicine. "I've always known about Mark, that he has this compulsion to help people," she said.
"When I came to Utah I was dance-driven, I spent three years pursuing it here. Then Mark and I went to Los Angeles to work with Jeff Slayton, a marvelous teacher. We came back in 1981, and Mark went into Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company.
"When we founded A Company of Four we spread our wings," she said. "We truly projected our feelings about the arts, their magic and mystery and humanity. We love the Company of Four. There were times when it was so exhausting, so discouraging, but mostly it was the most fun ever. We used to brainstorm - sit up all night and just talk and laugh and scheme, and out of that would come our ideas."
Having arrived via an unorthodox route at a rather conventional course - he pursuing a career in medicine, she with an artistic hobby/vocation - the Lowdermilks have advice for everyone: Do what you love.
"We have really had two careers, and our arts career is so important, what we learned there transfers in every way," said Mark Lowdermilk. "Do what you want, then transfer. Interests that develop from the many extensions of yourself will move you along."