Linda Espy is spending much of her time now getting her sculpted figures ready for the Victorian Christmas window display in Summerville. The Victorian Christmas Art Guild is setting up 17 scenes with 30 life-sized figures in the windows of downtown Summerville stores.
Espy creates original sculpted figures and has been nominated for Dolls of Excellence by Contemporary Doll Collector. She has been the subject of articles in Doll Reader and Doll Castle News, as well as had her dolls featured in other magazines. Espy says she has probably made over 400 Santas and altogether about 500 figures.
Espy’s work can be seen in the Victorian Christmas exhibit in Summerville from Thanksgiving through December. According to Espy, the Victorian Christmas Art Guild takes a historical approach to Christmas in the Victorian era at home and abroad. Each scene includes a narrative, and there are scenes of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with a Christmas tree; Dickens writing “A Christmas Carol” and Scrooge holding Tiny Tim along with scenes of a Toy Shoppe, a Sweet Shoppe and a working toy carousel with hand-carved horses. The scenes will be lighted until midnight each night.
Espy was born into an Air Force family in Beaufort, S.C., and lived in Texas and Florida before she landed in Auburn, Ala., for her last two years of high school. She was always interested in art and says she used to draw in school when she was supposed to be listening to the teacher. She would draw her hand in elementary school and then draw her hand holding a pencil because nothing else was around.
Her career, though, was in special education. She worked with a mentally-challenged class while she was in high school and also saw the play The Miracle Worker. For her, that was it. “I was hooked,” she says. So she went on to elementary and special education degrees, beginning at Auburn and finishing at Georgia State. She got her master’s degree at West Georgia while teaching at the Cerebral Palsy Center.
Espy taught special education at Avondale High School then at Menlo Elementary, where she started the special education program. There were only eight special education teachers in the county at that time.
Now retired, Espy says she loved the kids throughout her 33 years of teaching elementary and high school special education. She found ways to incorporate her love of art, often using it to teach her disabled students.
About 10 years ago, Espy started figure sculpting. Her interest in this medium began in Auburn when she saw the sculpted figures of an artist there who used paper mache. Later, her husband gave her as a present a class with an instructor who taught the basics of doll sculpting. Espy says, though, that she mostly learned by doing. She said, “You have to find your own way to things.”
Espy’s first figures were a five-inch boy and girl pair. She went on to make a variety of figures, which ranged from from Mark Twain (at her husband’s request) to a fairly tale series which included Geppetto, the Evil Queen from Snow White, Rapunzel and the Frog Prince. She even did a portrait doll of Don Welch when she was a guest on This N That.
Santa has been the figure she has made the most. She makes Santas of all sizes and also makes Santa pins. She creates bulldog pins for UGA fans and has even made a Vince Dooley Santa!
Art has always been an important part of Linda Espy’s life, from drawing to occupy herself in elementary school to using it in teaching her special education students to sculpting original figures, many of them Santa Clauses. The Summerville Victorian Christmas has become just one more way for her to share her love of art.
A variety of Espy’s work can be found in the Foothills Gallery in LaFayette. The gallery is on U.S. 27 at 301 Main Street across from the Marsh House. The web site is www.foothillsgallery.org/zenphoto2/. You can also join our Facebook group: Northwest Georgia Arts Guild–Foothills Art Gallery.
Krista Seckinger is the vice-chairperson at the Northwest Georgia Arts Guild.
Article courtsey of Walker County Messenger