'Capturing a moment in childhood': Artist's daughter offers dolls to late mother's community

Jun. 21—After the May 5 car accident that caused the deaths of Patrick and Sharon Mooney, daughter Laura Johnson collected about 70 soft-sculpture dolls her mother had made and sought to make her locally little-known but internationally recognized art available to the Clinton community.

"There's a handful of dolls that she sold to FAO Schwarz," Johnson, now of Washington State, told The Herald during a Thursday phone call. "My mom, especially, was just so quiet and humble, but she was so just extraordinarily talented. People just don't know about it. It's pretty incredible."

Patrick and Sharon had lived in Clinton since 1972. They'd met while attending graduate school at Southern Illinois University where they both earned master's degrees in special education.

Patrick taught for 30 years at Clinton High School, and Sharon provided instruction for students who weren't able to attend classroom schooling before she became a stay-at-home mom.

As involved members of their community, both Patrick and Sharon were members of the Clinton Arts Association for more than 50 years.

Patrick had significant involvement, as well, in the formation of the River Arts Center and the acquisition of the Fifth Avenue South building in which it's located.

He also had started Rainbow Pottery, located within the same building.

"My dad started Rainbow Pottery as his way to connect the community with art and connect them to the River Arts Center," Johnson said, "with the goal that Rainbow Pottery would be able to generate enough revenue to, hopefully, pay the utility bills for the building."

Their active involvement in the community also extended to membership of the Zion Lutheran Church and Clinton County Democratic Party.

It was after this year's County Democratic Party Hall of Fame dinner held at the Clinton County fairgrounds in early May that Patrick, 80, and Sharon, 81, were involved in a two-vehicle crash at about 9 p.m. just east of DeWitt on U.S. Highway 30 and 330th Avenue.

Patrick and Sharon were both transported to MercyOne Clinton hospital, then the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City where Patrick died on the same date of the accident. Sharon died five days later.

"I'm deeply upset about what happened," Johnson said. "It's shocking."

Going through her parents' house after their deaths, Johnson came across a number of her mother's dolls she hadn't realized Sharon had still been making since the 1980s.

As a child who'd spent her days in Clinton playing outdoors, Johnson speculates that her mother began making dolls to wear the fancy clothes that Johnson had come to be disinterested in.

"But I also think part of it was about capturing this moment in childhood as well," she said.

"The way she made them was in two pieces," Johnson said. "Each doll is two pieces of fabric sewn together."

Sharon would then embroider the eyes, sew on eyelashes, and stuff the head, sewing a small pillow inside the head as well.

"Through that, she would push a five-inch long needle through the pillow and then through the front of the face into the corner of the eye," Johnson explained.

"And then she would do it to the other corner of the eye, and then she would do it to both corners of the other eye, and then when she had all four of those threads sewn through, then she would pull them."

Doing so would create the lifelike shapes of the doll faces and give realistic depth to their features. Sharon also made the dolls' clothes herself, with the exception of bought shoes and socks. She would make hair of yarn for the smallest dolls that she'd make, but buy doll wigs for others.

Once completed, each doll would be numbered.

"There are some boy dolls," Johnson said. "I would say out of the 300 dolls she made, maybe 25 of them are boys."

Sharon mostly participated in juried art shows, submitting slides and photographs to art shows throughout the Midwest states. Her dolls won Best in Show twice in an international doll show hosted in California and again in another out of Massachusetts. Currently, a selection of her dolls in different sizes are being displayed through mid-August at the River Arts Center on Fifth Avenue South, which will receive commissions from their sales.

The larger dolls, referred to as "kindergarteners," that stand 22- to 30-inches tall are priced at $100 each. "Toddlers" stand about 20 inches in height, and smaller yet are the "baby" dolls.

"And then she has a whole series of miniature dolls which are about 10 to 14 inches tall," Johnson said. "And, as you know, your dolls have to have dolls, and sometimes they have to have teddy bears, too."

Though they appear to hold a standard of quality that would deem them dolls not to be played with, Johnson said the machine-washable dolls are, "quite durable."

"They were designed to be loved by a child," she said, "as well as adored by a collector."

Most of the proceeds from the sales of the dolls are to benefit the Clinton Arts Association, but Johnson also wants to put funding into a community fund for Clinton.

"My parents, they just opened their hearts, and their home, and their talents, and their wallets to so many people," Johnson said. "They just had their eye out for people and were willing to make sure that people knew that, no matter what, they were going to be their friend."

Johnson had just begun franchising her childrens' summer camp model nationwide at the time of her parents' deaths.

"Like human children are all individually unique," she said, "all of these dolls are."

For more information, Johnson can be contacted by email at [email protected]

The River Arts Center is open from 1-4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.