yellow hat turtles - work in progress
years ago, July 2015 to be exact, we sculpted over some old, reclaimed dolls with masking tape into funny looking little men with straw hats
these peculiar folks with pointed ears stayed exactly like this for a while, until we wanted to display them in our very first window installation at the Franklin Shops on First, in Ft Myers, FL, for the holidays
so we started painting them
this was when we had a studio, upstairs, in the edwards building at the Alliance for the Arts, and that was between 2016 and 2018
we didn’t use the hats
they got put to the side
this is how they look today
they’ve been in every Franklin Shops holiday window display that we’ve installed, which is four so far, and another is coming up in december 2026
but, back to the yellow hat turtles…
we recently came across that stack of hats (while looking for something else, ofcourse) and Jeff came up with the idea to use the hats as turtle shells and to paint them yellow to keep the looking like straw hats
here is a look at some of the process of making our yellow hat turtle collection …
and this is tangier the turtle, all finished, eyes cleaned, yellow dotted and varnished, hanging out with our new ‘peaches & kreme’ rabbit collection, who are still in process
