She calls it “looking through the keyhole” — the world of building a scale model.
Artist Kat Ruelle of International Falls has lived the creative life for as long as she can remember, and building doll houses is just one of the genres that feeds her craving to create.
She says model builders mentally morph life’s objects into miniature scale, visualizing them as items in a diminutive world. They look at things and imagine how they would translate to a smaller scale: A wrist watch becomes a grandfather clock; fabrics become tiny rugs, quilts and pillows; little twigs and rocks become building materials that mimic authentic construction.
Even her grandchildren get into it, she says. And, she adds, kids learn a lot from planning and playing with a doll house — landscaping, materials selection, measuring, designing, proportioning, and conceptual skills can be useful throughout life.
“It brings a whole sense of the building industry and house plans to them,” said Ruelle. A system of applied aesthetics becomes a feng shui thing, she added.
Ruelle builds her doll houses in 1/9 scale “because a kid can really move things around and play with it,” she said. Finding manufactured accessories in that size is more difficult than the 1/12 scale in which most ready-made doll houses are generally designed, she said. “(Those are) more for looking at when they’re that small,” she said.
While the imaginations of young children are sure to inhabit the rooms of a doll house, Ruelle admits that she and plenty of other adults are still infatuated by life portrayed in miniature scale. Her most recent doll house is now being completed for a local girl.
This doll house, currently set up inside Alli-Kat Floral & Pets (a business owned by Ruelle’s daughter), carries the flavor of the north woods. Its lodge-like characterizations include unadorned screen windows and a mounted bear’s head on a rock fireplace. And what family of dolls would be the perfect inhabitants of this cozy cabin? The Clampetts of course — now moved from their Beverly Hills mansion into the gloriously rustic abode.
“Jed” reads the paper; “Jethro” settles down with his “geetar;” and “Elly Mae” is at the table with a bucket of fresh berries. The family’s 9-inch stature integrates it into the log-sided cabin which measures 4-feet high by 2.5-feet wide by 18-inches deep.
The basic structure was built by Ruelle’s husband Darrell, who is happy, she said, to finally have it removed from his garage. She was happy that he had incorporated an amazing staircase into the doll house. An open first and second floor with three sky windows allows the structure to be flooded with outside light.
The design assimilates materials native to this area — such as weathered twig headboards, chairs and railings; and small shale rocks grouted into the fireplaces, exterior foundation and interior flooring. The roof of the house takes on a shingled effect but is actually a continuous flow of hand-cut cardboard.
Tiny accouterments like copper pans, pottery, bags of food staples, canned goods, stools, newspapers and books were purchased for the settings. On the walls hang wooden-framed nature prints made from the representations of life-sized paintings displayed in art catalogs. Ruelle admits that a claw-foot bathtub was originally an ice cream dish, but she saw in it a greater destination.
Ruelle said that the hours of focus and hand work required to build a doll house kept her mind and hands busy after she broke her arm recently. She often works on the project until midnight. Asked to estimate the potential cost of the Clampett residence, she said time and materials could add up to about $2,000.
Ruelle noted that there are several miniaturists in Borderland, including Buck Johnson who is known for his scale-modeled vintage Rainy Lake boats. “I’m really fascinated by the military angle that some men take (in model building),” Ruelle said. “The detail is mind boggling.”
Ruelle built her first scale model as a young mother along with her friend Mary (Lucca) Mulally. The two women designed doll houses for their daughters after reading the book, “Among the Dolls.” This is a somewhat sinister but captivating story of a girl who gets a gloomy old doll house for her birthday instead of the gift she wants. She soon becomes fascinated by the small shadowy world and its inhabitants.
