“I want to buy a paper doll that I can call my own …” So goes the old song. But name that tune, and Mokena artist Sue Shanahan gets to work, doing what she loves to do best.
Shanahan captures children’s likenesses on paper in colored pencil, on canvas in acrylic paints, and appears in magazines as paper dolls. The walls of her home are filled with her artwork-images taken from the lives of her children and of those she was hired to draw. Even her curio cabinet carries on the theme, in the form of collectible dolls created by other artists.
“All children have cute qualities,” Shanahan said. “I try to make my portraits realistic but unique.”
Her paintings capture children in their natural element. There is little “Molly,” sitting under a Christmas tree playing with presents, and there is “Elyse,” preparing for Easter in a Laura Ashley dress surrounded by tiny yellow chicks, or “Leslie and Bridget,” two young, hopeful ballerinas garbed in pink tutus.
“I’m trying to get away from the generic little child,” she said. “All children are beautiful on their own.”
Besides children’s portraits and paper dolls, Shanahan also has designed greeting cards and inspirational pictures and illustrated children’s books. A childhood hobby predicted her future.
“I never was a (store-bought) paper doll collector,” she said. “I just kind of fell into it. I used to make paper dolls when I was younger. I have a shoebox full of clothes I made. Maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Though Shanahan, 37, had been successfully selling her work for about the past five years, her career took a major upturn in December 1992. Using two of her children as models, Shanahan created paper dolls of “Bridget and Brian, Christmas, 1920” and submitted them to Doll Reader magazine in Cumberland, Md.
“They called me right away,” Shanahan recalled.
Now her work appears regularly in the magazine. For each issue, Shanahan designs paper dolls modeled after another artist’s collector doll, allowing collectors a more affordable way to amass the dolls, which can range in price from several hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. An issue of Doll Reader costs $4.50.
Debbie Thompson, associate editor of Doll Reader, said she was impressed immediately by Shanahan’s artwork. “Her drawing is beautiful. The colors are really nice,” Thompson said. Shanahan’s submission was “one of the nicest we’d seen in a long time.”
Though the magazine had been running a paper doll feature, Shanahan said she developed the idea of turning collectible dolls into paper ones. Thompson added that Shanahan has a choice of which doll she’d like to portray.
“It seemed like a good partnership,” Thompson said. “(Paper dolls are) really starting to catch on. . . . When her package arrives, I can’t wait to open it. It’s like Christmas.”
Her latest commission has come from that children’s paradise, Walt Disney World in Orlando. Shanahan designed a limited edition paper doll for Disney World’s annual Doll and Teddy Bear show, held Nov. 4-7.
According to Debbie Carlos, Disney World merchandise buyer, this is the fifth year for the convention but the first for the paper doll. Carlos said Shanahan won the commission because Disney buyers had seen her work in different trade magazines and admired it for its detail.
“It’s very spooky-it looks so much like a child,” Carlos said. “Her work is just beautiful.”
Each doll and set of clothes is printed on parchment paper and signed and numbered by the artist, with a limited edition of 500. So far, about 30 have been sold for $25 each.
“It’s an affordable souvenir,” Shanahan said.
Shanahan was represented at the show by more than her dolls. Artist Alice Lester Leverett, who had crossed paths with Shanahan through her work for Doll Reader, designed a collectible doll after Shanahan’s daughter, Bridget. The doll, which was designed through an agreement with Shanahan, comes with a trunk of clothes similar to what Bridget often wears, including leggings and an oversized shirt. And she should be well dressed. Bridget, the doll, an exclusive at the Disney show, retailed for $2,000. Only 25 of the porcelain dolls are available, Leverett said.
Shanahan had fashioned a paper doll for Doll Reader magazine of Leverett’s doll “Laura.”
“We got to be friends over the phone. She sent me pictures of her daughter,” said Leverett, who is based in Jacksonville. Fla. “That’s sort of how our relationship evolved. For me, it’s exciting to see my work interpreted by another artist into another medium.”
Another of Shanahan’s current projects is a commission by the father of twin girls, creating paper dolls in the girls’ likenesses as a Christmas present for their mother.
Shanahan began the project by photographing the girls in favorite outfits-one holding the family dog, the other a favorite doll-and in their Christmas dresses.
The twins are Kathryn and Michelle Habib, 9, who live in Frankfort with their parents, Marcia and Jim. Marcia Habib met Shanahan at a wedding in which her daughters were flower girls, and the artist approached her about using the girls as models. After seeing her work, Marcia Habib hired her to do a portrait of her daughters as a Christmas present for her husband. The portrait of the girls at age 6 hangs over the Habibs’ mantel.
“The way she captures a child is incredible. I’ve never seen another artist do a job like hers,” Marcia Habib said. “That picture is my daughters at that time.”
She attributes such realism to the time Shanahan spent with the girls when taking the photographs. “She caught the fact that Michelle plays with her hair. She incorporated their personality,” she said. “(Shanahan) uses her heart to put on canvas what she wants to say.”
For those who’d like to commission such works, paper doll sets (featuring a doll with several outfits) start at $1,600, acrylic portrait prices start at $2,500, and colored pencil portraits start at $1,250.
Even though Shanahan studied art at Joliet Junior College and for a semester at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, she considers herself primarily self-taught, with her three children-Brian, 6, Bridget, 11, and Rob, 13- as models. As a full-time, stay-at-home mother, Shanahan pursued her artwork as a sideline. She got into it more ardently when Brian entered kindergarten last year.
Working at home has its advantages and disadvantages, she said. Her drafting table is set up in the family room, where the television set is and her children often gather. Shelves filled with children’s books and drawings surround her. As word spreads about her work and demand has grown, Shanahan has become busier, but her demands as a mother are equally important.
“It can be hectic to get anything done,” she said. “Sometimes I have to work late into the evening.”
Her own family, she said, always encouraged her. Says husband Bob, a Metra signal maintainer: “First and foremost, she takes care of the family. But she also manages somehow to do what she does. I’m proud of her. I try to be supportive of her.”
He said he enjoys her artwork, particularly the pieces of his children. “I love it. Of course, I’m a little prejudiced.”
At the moment, Shanahan’s family connection continues. She is illustrating a children’s book being written by her sister, Laura Fahrner of Plainfield. The book tells of a little girl who finds a fairy in a garden and her dilemma over keeping the secret.
As children in Joliet, Fahrner said, her sister was always the better artist.
“She won all the Halloween poster contests,” said Fahrner, a social worker at Waubonsee Valley High School in Aurora. “Her work was always so much better than mine. So I just quit.” Fahrner recalled selling bookmarks made by her sister for a dime each.
In addition to teaming with Fahrner, Shanahan is creating a paper doll fashioned after the Lawton Doll Co.’s Flora McFlimsy, which is based on a 19th Century poem that tells the story of a girl who spends the day shopping, yet comes home with nothing to wear to a dance that evening.
Wendy Lawton, owner of the Turlock, Calif.-based company, said Flora sold out so fast that she commissioned Shanahan to create a paper doll as an alternative.
“She’s well known in the (doll) industry for her paper dolls,” Lawton said. “We’re crazy for her work. She has such a delicate style. It’s soft but has so much substance.”
But Lawton said she’s most impressed by Shanahan’s children’s portraits.
“Her drawings of children are genius. She has the heart of a child,” Lawton said. “She draws all around the child almost to the point of sentimentality, yet if you look closer, you see the sparkle in the eye, and she puts them into positions that are so childlike.”
Lawton added that’s she’s considering having Shanahan design paper dolls of her children. “It puts them into a historical perspective, and it shows the whole surrounding of the child,” she said. “Sue has such a broad following in the industry.”
Shanahan’s portrait work is represented by a gallery in Lake Geneva, Wis., her paper dolls by the Riki Schaffer gallery in Bloomfield, Mich.
According to Hope Grant, Schaffer gallery manager, Shanahan sent an unsolicited package of her work. Impressed, Grant called her back, and Shanahan suggested that the studio offer her services designing paper dolls from real children as gifts, Grant said.
“We would ask clients for photos of the child doing certain things, wearing favorite clothes, and the portrait would really be a paper doll,” she said. “Sue had a great idea. It was very different from everything else we were doing. It’s really one-of-a-kind art.”
On occasion, as in the case of the Habibs, Shanahan will take her own photographs, Grant said, and design the piece in a setting of the parents’ preference, whether traditional, Victorian or contemporary. Otherwise, Shanahan works from photos taken by professional photographers hired by the parents. The Schaffer gallery focuses solely on one-of-a-kind doll art, with artists from around the world, Grant said.
“We have a limited clientele,” she said, “most of whom are very sophisticated doll collectors. We’re thrilled to have her work here.”
Carol Warren, owner of the Waterfront Galley at the Abbey in Lake Geneva, Wis., said she handles only portrait artists, and she has sold Shanahan’s work for the past four years.
“Sue’s work is absolutely unusual. She incorporates a fantasy theme with it,” Warren said. “She will take a regular child and put a child in antique Victorian clothing with antique toys.”
When Warren first saw her work, she contacted Shanahan, who averages 50 to 75 portraits a year for the gallery. “Her detail is so incredible,” Warren said. “She loves children, and it shows in her work.”
Because of the detail in her portraits, Shanahan said it takes her about 60 hours to do one. But she doesn’t mind spending the time.
“It’s a creative urge,” Shanahan said. “I have to do it.”
