Seniors at the Mathews Active Lifestyle Center are working together to create a dollhouse as a group art project under the guidance of the Bay School Community Arts Center.
Bay School staff members visit the senior center twice a month to engage seniors in a variety of art projects. Teaching artist Virginia Coyle, who alternates visits with teaching artist Davida Hall, is a lifelong fan of dollhouses, and when she saw a wooden dollhouse kit at a flea market this spring she thought, “Let’s do that.”
Work on the dollhouse started in April, and progress is “a slow go,” said Coyle, but it is happening. With just an hour a month to work on the project, the group has painted the exterior walls, wallpapered each of the interior walls, cut out and installed sheets of wood veneer to make hardwood flooring, and assembled and glued several rooms of furniture from kits. Coyle herself assembled and glued the structure as the walls were completed.
Over the winter and into next spring, participants w...