Monday, June 6
June 6, 2011Students named to Nicholls honors lists
June 8, 2011
“I got to the age that I just was not afraid of color anymore. That’s why all my things have to have color,” said Dot-tee Ratcliff as she demonstrated her skills of bringing paint on treated glass to life.
Dot-tee, the name she prefers to go by both personally and professionally, is a Chauvin native, former teacher and self taught folk artist who during the past two years has gained a national following.
Working out of a former raised, wood-frame barbershop that she and her husband, Willie, bought and moved to their property on La. Highway 56. Sheets of glass, plates, ceramic and even fabric are transformed in this structure that has been converted to an art studio and gallery.
A lizard shaped sign in front of their terra cotta-colored house, with its green trimmed windows and a deep blue door, lets those driving through the area know that they have found the location of Dot-tee’s Art Gecko.
The 59-year-old artist graduated from Nicholls State University and taught mostly kindergarten for 32 years. She also spent time working at the Chauvin Sculpture Garden, about a mile up the bayou from her home. “That’s where I got really interested in art,” Dot-tee said. “When I quit teachin’ I said, ‘You know what? I wanted to be an artist my whole life so I need to do it.'”
Dot-tee said her art is influenced by life on the bayous and her experiences of southern Louisiana.
“I worked in gardens at [the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium] and I was having trouble with tou-lou-lous [fiddler crabs]. So I started painting tou-lou-lous [on objects] as a joke,” she said. But the joke turned on her as the popularity of miniature crab figures displayed three dimensionally with layers of glass and varnish became a popular and profitable product desired by others.
“My friends that owned a little grocery store in Cocodrie started selling my plates [with tou-lou-lous],” Dot-tee said.
She showed an aqua-colored plate with 14 pink tou-lou-lous, and pointed out that on each work of that kind there is one figure going the opposite direction from the others. “That’s sort of like me,” Dot-tee said, and exposed her wry sense of humor.
As demand for her work grew, so did the images and options of what would be painted. Figures of raised homes, people performing music and festive scenes on the decorative wall hangings expanded Dot-tee’s painting on glass panes.
She established a style by creating pictures with a three dimensional effect that virtually come to life with a little imagination.
“I paint the things I’ve seen and experienced growin’ up in Louisiana,” Dot-tee said as she showed a fisherman casting his net, a young couple jumping the broomstick, serious and detailed images of birds native to the area and humorous figures, including her trademark pink alligators walking to their swamp camp house.
“I’m known for my pink alligators,” she said while holding a conversation and working freehand on a new piece. “I graduated from tou-lou-lous to pink alligators.”
Dot-tee has never had an art lesson. “I just paint what I feel. That’s what makes folk art different. It comes from the heart. I’d rather do it freehand [than use a pattern].
“I like the feel of glass and told my husband, ‘We ought to make pictures on glass.’ So we make them on glass,” she said.
After Hurricane Ike, the couple lost several trees on their property, including a cypress from which Willie started making frames for his wife’s work.
So, while Dot-tee produces the paintings, her husband of 30 years constructs frames. “We always make the frames first and get the glass [cut] to fit,” Dot-tee said. “It started out real simple.”
Dot-tee and Willie set up their first show at the Sculpture Garden and completely sold out. With encouragement from other artists, they began to travel to other folk art shows and received orders from cities and states as far away as Seattle, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. Dot-tee’s work has also been featured with the National Park Service.
“I got my own methods. I don’t ever follow any directions. I was a teacher for so many years giving directions that I can’t follow them. I’m sort of like the children,” Dot-tee said.
Not many locals are aware of Dot-tee’s work. “I just don’t tell just anybody,” she said. “I’m just gettin’ started. If they like it, they like it. If they don’t, well ….”
Dot-tee said one element that separates her work from other folk artists, in addition to there not being patterns found in craft shops or home and garden magazines, is that there is no one else she knows of that specifically depicts Cajun people and culture.
“I like Cajun people because it is all my memories of growin’ up,” Dot-tee said. “Even when I went to high school all of my memories are about this area.”
Dot-tee’s tools are what she finds available. “I don’t just use brushes. I also use toothpicks, paperclips, I use the wrong end of a brush, I like a pencil and sponges, anything that is going to give me a different shape. But my favorite little tool is this pot,” Dot-tee said holding up a small metal container. “This was my mawmaw’s rice pot. So it means a lot to me.”
Fish and fishing are many of the images and scenes that come from her childhood and life in Chauvin. “When I was a girl I use to go fishin’ with my daddy. He thought I liked fishin’. I was really watchin’ the boys,” she admitted. Yet those experiences stuck with her and are now being expressed in her work.
At almost every festival Willie and Dot-tee attend they sell out of their merchandise. “We do pretty good,” Dot-tee said as she declined to attach a dollar figure to her comment. “We just don’t know much about promotin’ ourselves,” said Willie.
“I don’t fit in every gallery,” Dot-tee said. “I fit in folk art galleries. My stuff is priced to where if a teacher wants to buy it she can afford it. My whole life I was a teacher, but I couldn’t afford art.”
Willie said he likes being in the art business with his wife. “She likes it and she is not as stressed out as she was as a teacher,” he said.
Dot-tee explained that folk art stands on its own and her depiction of Cajun life offers the art world, and those that simply enjoy her whimsical works, a unique viewing of life in southern Louisiana. “Because it is folk art,” she said. “It’s meant to stand out.” Just like Dot-tee.
Known for painting three-dimensional images on glass, Dot-tee Ratcliff does all her work freehand and said the images are based off her memories growing up in the Chauvin area. MIKE NIXON
