On the Periphery

Not much in the way of goodies again, this week, other than another unfinished quilt project, a giant bag of vintage gumball charms, and a few Josef Originals miniatures. Oh, and one other little thing:

A customized Classic Quarter Horse Mare. What’s interesting about her is that this isn’t the typical kind of custom I find in the field. Most of those are either pro/am hobbyist creations (not all that rare around here, actually), or nonhobbyist pieces that were either repair jobs, or someone with a creative itch to scratch.

The nonhobbyist pieces are usually a bit cruder – like this gal – and don’t feature any significant customizing beyond hairing. The person who worked on her roached her mane, docked her tail, tweaked her ears, removed her logo and even tried to square her hind legs.

That’s a lot of work, and definitely not something I expected to see with this kind of paint job. She kind of fascinates me!

Sometimes I run across people I call peripheral hobbyists. Although they either were never directly involved in the hobby, or even aware of its existence, within their own enclosed communities (or even just their own homes) they pretty much did everything we do in the hobby anyway.

Basically, they invented the hobby for themselves. Sometimes they happen to meet other people who do the same things, and sometimes some of those people have some contact with even more people, and eventually that’s how they get into the hobby proper.

(From what I hear – I didn’t formally enter the hobby until 1978 – that’s pretty much how the hobby created itself. We needed it, we created it. Breyer is just along for the ride.)

But sometimes they don’t, for whatever reasons. Interests change, they get frustrated by the state of their artistic skills, money becomes an issue, or that crucial “first contact” never happens.

Was that the case here? Someone who either made some tentative steps into the hobby – the larger one, or the one of their own making – then stepped away?

I found her in a dump bin of toys – almost literally the definition of no context – so I’ll never know.

I plan on keeping her around for a while, and possibly making her a rehab project like some of my quilts, trying to take her where her original artist intended.