Polly Law collects weird words. She has 125 of them so far, and they range from the completely obscure (“Agelast” - a person who never laughs) to the highly unusual (“Nubivagant” - moving amongst clouds) to the just plain wacky (“Oxter” - armpit). The only thing they all have in common? According to Polly, “they set my creativity pinging!” 

Hence, The Word Project — a series of images that imaginatively interpret each word’s meaning as a 3D collage of found items. The resulting “word portraits” are so bizarrely captivating and beautiful that we just had to ask Polly how she does it. She gave us a breakdown of her creative process by sharing a few of her favorite words.

You can check them out below. More of her work is available at her portfolio, here.

Muliebrity (n) femininity

This one is a fairly straightforward visual pun on the two parts of the image. 1) the word’s first syllable is pronounced “mule, ” so I knew I needed to work a mule into it. 2) the visual employs very stereotypical feminine attributes- the hourglass figure, 50’s style cocktail dress, eye shadow, the coy glance over the shoulder, the inferred gloves. Then to further the allusion, the dropped handkerchief.

Murfles & Burbles (n) the former: freckles; the latter: tingly pimples

This one was the result of a few creative zigs and zags, but that is how many of the word/dolls evolved. I knew when I came across these words that they should be paired, so that was where I started. I haven’t got the faintest idea where the notion to make them part of a vaudeville/circus act came from but there it was. Originally the sketch was of two figures like Murfles (the one on the left) with Burbles having the tingly pimples on the face. That seemed too obvious so I had Burbles do a handstand and the tingly pimples then became on the other set of cheeks- zig. Now, it was getting interesting and fun. I found some crepe-paper in my paper drawer so I used that for skirts. Also initially, Murfles was a girl. Note: Burble’s gender is undisclosed- most everyone assumes Burbles is a male. The assumption that if the figure is wearing a skirt it must be female, led me to add a nice big ginger moustache and some body hair, a very good zag.

Pedology sounds like it should be about feet, not dirt. That was my jumping-off point. I made a mannikin out of soil, complete with different strata (which also add visual interest) and a thatch of green grass for hair. I felt that a figure made from soil should be sort of thick and lumpy and since I wanted to play with the idea of feet, it needed to have appropriately large feet. People are always intrigued by the little pencil- it is from a tiny set I picked up at the local art-supply store. So the figure made of soil is studying its own feet which are made of soil- a neat, circular pun.