THE STORY NEXT DOOR is a new weekly feature. To suggest someone to be profiled, contact reporter Theresa Hogue at 758-9526 or theresa.hogue@lee.net

By THERESA HOGUE
Gazette-Times reporter

Dancing figures leap over Louie Gizyn’s head, juggling stars and twirling their skirts in her Corvallis art studio. All of them have leapt out of Gizyn’s vivid imagination, often inspired by the pages of one of her beloved children’s books.

Gizyn likes to say she’s majored in art since kindergarten, but she found her perfect medium when she began dabbling in clay while a student at Blackburn College. Her determination to illustrate children’s books quickly disappeared when she began exploring the possibilities of three-dimensional sculpture.

Soon she was drawing inspiration from books and travel, and after a trip to Mexico, where she saw brightly colored marionettes, she came back to school and asked her art professor if she could make puppets. He agreed, and introduced her to his wife, who was an art doll maker. Thrilled with her new discovery, Gizyn made her first puppet, a stoneware bodied creature wearing a monk-like costume. The dolls evolved from there.

“After I left school and lived back in Chicago, I started looking at books about the circus and came gradually to the medieval or more ancient performers that would travel from town to town,” she said.

For the last 30 years, she’s been living and working in Corvallis, at the same little studio on Taylor Avenue. She’s never strayed from the little figures that have won her heart, but now she focuses on making mobilesCorvallis artist’s marionettes leap, twinkle, sparkle rather than articulated marionettes.

The bodies are now white stoneware, hand painted with demure expressions and colorful lips. Their facial expressions may betray a sense of humor, but Gizyn is much more interested how their bodies physically express emotion.

“I look more for the leap,” she said. “If I get a little smirk or smile or twinkle in their eye, that’s good enough for me. It’s more of the body language I’m looking for.”

Each figure is dressed in elaborate handmade costumes, a tribute to Gizyn’s ancestors, who were Austrian tailors. While each of the figures expresses a different facet of Gizyn’s creativity, she doesn’t have a problem letting them float out the door to their new owners.

“It’s always my favorites that seem to go first,” she said.

The most recent feather in her cap is a series of five mobiles that hang over the bar of a new downtown Portland restaurant called Pinocchio. The figures were chosen by the restaurant’s owner, Michael Bazzani.

“He has the pieces hanging in front of a false proscenium over the bar and they’re all individually lit, so it’s really quite magical,” she said. “It really looks beautiful.”

Although Gizyn’s work could be made and sold anywhere in the country, she said she’s found herself firmly planted in Northwest soil.

“There are so many artists here I know and love,” she said. “We’re an interwoven family.”

And she’s even gotten used to the rain, which has helped her stay focused on her work.

“It’s a very livable place,” she said. “On gray days, you stay inside and get something done.”