From Midwestern, small-town girl to Paris fashion model, Kathy Weinberg has led a diversified life. Born in Centralia, Illinois, Kathy and her brother grew up in a home attached to a 14-room motel that her mother ran.  "It wasn’t always an easy life for a kid,” Kathy recalls, “with no yard and very little privacy. I escaped it all through art."

            

"At the age of 17,” she continues, “I attended college at Southern Illinois University (SIU) in Carbondale. I lasted one year.  I wanted to run away and see the world!  Hindsight is 20/20 and in hindsight, I do now wish I had gotten my college degree in Art Education.  Instead, I left SIU and headed to New York City, where I signed with the Eileen Ford Agency and started modeling. (Now see, Kathy, faced with this very same dilemma, I forfeited my modeling career and finished college instead.  Anybody can be an international model . . . not everyone can finish college!)   I traveled from New York to Paris and worked there, as well as in Italy and many other countries.  It was a great time in my life but very fast and furious.  Contrary to common belief, modeling is not as glamorous as it appears.  It is grueling and full of hard, hard work and lots of rejection.  I was lucky.  I worked right away and was able to live well. 

The influence that it had was that it opened my eyes to what I always KNEW was out there: a big, interesting and wonderful world!  You have to understand; I was a young girl from a very small, country town.  I had never even heard a foreign language spoken before this!  I learned to speak French fairly well, as I stayed in Paris for two years (yeah, and I learned it in a dreary classroom . . . that's better, n'est ce pas?).  Paris was my base, and I traveled from there to do jobs.  I came back to Illinois to regroup and met the father of my son.  Unfortunately, that marriage didn’t work out.  I met my current husband and we made a combined family. (Kathy’s current husband was her OB/GYN, already divorced with custody of his two children.  They got together a year after Kathy's divorce.)   We had a yours, mine, and ours situation.  That has to be the most difficult thing I have ever done but the most rewarding. After we married, I raised his two children, ages four and twelve, my son, a little over a year old, and our son who came about a year and a half after our marriage."

               

Kathy's work experience has been quite varied.  While growing up, she worked in her parents’ hotel, doing everything from running the office to being a maid.   She's also been a dog groomer, worked in retail, and been a barber!  While Kathy no longer works as a barber, she did complete Barber College and keeps her license current.  Now, she works full time as an office manager for her husband's medical practice.

Kathy's first doll was an Annette Himstedt® doll. "I am an avid collector of artist dolls," Kathy notes. "I found fashion dolls while reading Doll Reader.   Until that time I had no idea that a doll such as Gene® existed.  I loved Barbie® as a girl, but this was something totally different!  I bought my first Genes, Red Venus and Monaco, and a new collection was started!  Just what I needed!  I have collected over the years somewhere in the vicinity of 100 artist dolls, including Himstedt, Zwergnase®, Philip Heath®, Heloise®, Kish®, and many, many others.  As for fashion dolls, I have many!  I’m hopeless and will collect dolls until the day I die. I am passionate about them."

                  

 

About six to seven years ago, and about a year after buying her first Gene, Kathy started to see repaints on eBay®.   Desperately needing to make some extra money, Kathy thought, “I can do that!” "I also thought, " she recalls, "that some of the repaints were so beautiful that I would love to create some beautiful faces! I gave it a go and when my first Gene sold on eBay for $180, I was ecstatic!  I have been repainting ever since and enjoying every minute of it.”

                    

Kathy has collaborated with Magalie Dawson, painting a doll to go with one of Magalie's custom outfits.  "It was a very rewarding experience," Kathy notes. "She is such a pro!"  Generally, though, Kathy prefers doing her own thing.  "The people I have collaborated with live far from me,” she explains, “so it takes a lot of emailing and pictures to get the job done. It's very difficult."

"I have had several people who own my dolls  ask me to create a certain doll, and I am comfortable doing so," Kathy says. "However, I think I actually prefer to do dolls as I see them, and sell them as direct sales or at auction.  The reason is that my vision and the customer’s vision could be completely different, even though we think we are on the same page.  I find commissions a bit scary, as it is very difficult at times for a customer to communicate what they really want, and I would just hate for someone to be disappointed! But, with that being said, I still do take commissions from time to time, and all collectors have to do is e-mail and ask me.  We'll discuss what they have in mind and go from there.   With a completed doll, listed either for direct sale or on eBay, the customer sees what he or she is getting, so no one is disappointed.  Customers can see the doll and decide if that is a doll they want to add to their collection."

While Kathy does paint Tonner® dolls, she finds them to be more difficult to do than Gene.  "I must say that Gene is still my favorite doll to repaint," Kathy notes. "Her face sculpt makes for so many possibilities.  I don't dislike doing Tonner dolls; I just like doing Gene more." 

                    

 

                     

 

 

Although Kathy has a website, www.reflectionsrepaints.com, she claims it desperately needs to be updated!  "Time is my biggest issue," she explains. "Working in my husband’s office currently makes it so difficult! I just can’t find the time to get the job done.  Hopefully I’ll be able to do that soon!  I use my doll money to help my children in school.  We have two boys in college and that is so expensive! (How sweet, they gave up their Paris modeling days for an education, too!)   I am able to help pay for things they and my high- school-aged boy need.  I am so appreciative and truly blessed that I can paint and earn some extra money . . . and I say that with great humility.  I take none of my sales for granted."

Asked where her artistic skills come from, Kathy recalls, "I have just always been able to do art.  It was a gift I was blessed with and a saving grace during my childhood.  I think that trial and error is always involved when one attempts any artistic endeavor.  Art is so subjective that I feel a person has to tap into what interests people, and that involves trial and error.  I have sold dolls high and sold dolls for very little money, which, I feel, pretty much proves my point. 

                                    

Kathy finds some inspiration for faces and hairdos in magazine pictures, but mostly, she states, "I just see the faces in my mind and try to transfer what I envision onto a doll's face.”  Sometimes she paints actresses but doesn't use photographs as guidelines.   She painted Matt O'Neill® as Brad Pitt.  "I liked Matt's sculpt," she observes, "so I may be doing more of him eventually."

Once Kathy has an idea of what she wants her repaint to look like, she doesn't sketch out the face on paper or draw the face on the doll.  She simply removes the original facepaint and starts painting.   While she doesn't know how much time a repaint takes her, she does note that she paints every night.  Creating the face and deciding on the "look" and color combinations are her favorite part of the process.  Her least favorite part is the photography. "I am very picky and hard on myself when it comes to the pictures I want to represent the doll as she looks in person," she reveals. "I want the buyer to see, as closely as possible, what the real doll looks like." 

                         

 

Having almost no local resources for paint and brushes, Kathy buys most of her supplies from online art retail suppliers such as Cheap Joe's, Golden, and Rex Art, and on eBay. 

Kathy works out of her home, and describes her location this way:  "I had an art studio built in the basement.  It's a very nice room with lots of ceiling lighting (light being so important to me), but no matter, I hate basements and prefer natural light, so I am not overly happy with my current studio.  I hope one day to build a new, free-standing structure on ground level!  We are looking to move and an art studio is a priority.  My husband KNOWS this! LOL!"

                

 

With the long, stressful hours Kathy works during the day, she's just happy to have time to repaint at all.  She paints every night, considering it to be a therapeutic way to unwind from work, as well as a necessity if she wants to get any dolls ready to sell. 

Before working so many hours, Kathy loved to garden.  She also loved decorating her home, which included totally repainting complete rooms with faux finishes and glazes, and anything to do with art.  Although she traveled a lot during her modeling days, working in many countries, Kathy no longer desires to travel; she says, "I enjoy staying home and having my art studio and my 'stuff' around me."  

             

 

Kathy has never attended a convention, but hopes to attend the Gene Convention this year.  She used to attend doll shows, when they were held nearby, but only as an attendee, never as a seller. 

Looking toward the next ten years, Kathy's dreams are simple. "I hope to be living peacefully somewhere other than here," she states. "Thankfully, that is currently in the works!  Professionally, I'll just play it by ear!”  Twenty years?  Even simpler.  "Hopefully," she says, "I'll still be breathing."  We hope so too, Kathy.  Either way, your repaints leave us breathless! 

Addendum

OK, I tried.  I really tried to let the model thing go.  But I'm nosy.  I suspect most of my readers are, too!  While Kathy completely downplayed this aspect of her life (didn't even  bother to mention her Paris Vogue cover!), I needed details.  Gory ones!  So I sent her the completed article but shamelessly begged her to give me all the dirt!  This is what I got:

"Hi, Lisa . . . it sounds fine, but I sure am a boring person. LOL! 

I'll write a little more about my modeling days if you'd like, but what do you want?  Do you want to know things like how I got started?  I was in New York City with my aunt, taking my cousin to the dentist. We called the Ford Agency, who told us they weren't seeing any girls that day. Undeterred, we went anyway!  After they saw me, they sent me directly to Francesco Scavullo who took Polaroids and sent me back with them to the agency.  I was accepted on the spot. I'm SURE he called them and said it was a 'go.’ . . . [Do you want to know] that I went to Paris with $50 and no place to stay, knowing that if my agency had to support me they would also have to get me work to recoup their money. :) .  . .  that my last job, when I decided to take a break from it all, was for swimwear in Greece with Christie Brinkley . . . that I started at about the same time, and worked with and was friends with, people like Kim Basinger and Barbara Minty (who was Steve McQueen's last wife) . .  . that after a long, hard decision on a shampoo company's part ( Herbal Essence, I believe), I lost a big TV commercial to Kim . . . that I did a TV commercial for Penney's . . . that I did a major ad with Broadway Joe Namath for his Puma sneakers (in his hey day when he was IT and wore a black mink coat on the sidelines LOL).  I got to go out on the Jets’ practice field and get him and it was a riot! LOL!  The other players were teasing the heck out of him. LOL! . . . that I did the first nude for Esquire magazine, to my parents’ horror!!! . . . that I had a big spread in Life magazine (they were doing a story about little halter tops - remember the time - it was a big deal for a woman to wear basically a bra in public) . . . that I did a billboard for Levi's on a rearing horse - which took two nights and lots of smoke machines to shoot . . . that I did the Paris runway shows for people like Karl Lagerfeld and what it was like backstage - the most famous, beautiful models everywhere getting makeup done and putting on clothes and the frantic rush, rush, RUSH, and on my part fear! . . . and the famous faces that you see as you walk down the runway, which seems miles long, but is SO exhilarating once you come off the 'stage?'  . . . that I went to lunch one day with Roman Polanski (the creep, everything they say about him is true) and Andy Warhol for Roman to do an interview for Andy's magazine. Later, I saw my words printed as if Roman had said them . . . that I had an affair with Warren Beatty (who didn't? LOL!) when I was 19 and he was 35 . . .  that I went out with several movie stars but that the one I fell hard for, but couldn't do anything about because I was living with a very wealthy French man, was Omar Sharif (when he was as beautiful as he was in Dr. Zhivago)  LOL! . . that, to this day, I regret not doing anything about him? . . . that I lived in St. Tropez during the summer and Paris during the winter . . . that I did TV commercials in French and learned the script from rote.  I had my French boyfriend tape record it and I just repeated it until I had it.  I could start from any place in the script, as I knew it so well. 

[Do you want to know that ] I was just a wild child and any person could have done the same thing I did, IF they had the nerve and the right look . . . that I have a son with blond hair and sky blue eyes who is beautiful enough to be a model and has the current look, and that I am thinking of sending some pictures of him to some agencies EXCEPT that I would rather see him finish college . . . sigh . . . HE would rather model so I am dragging my feet, but I guess I'll do some pictures soon and we'll negotiate."

 

Um . . . yeah, Kathy, I want stuff like that!