Athena Workman

Athena Workman is a self-trained artist. She began drawing at around age 2, and remembers drawing a lot of ballerinas. Considering that she's one of the most awkward-looking dancers ever, these were certainly fantasy illustrations. She had children and got married at a young age, and devoted most of her time to being a wife and mother while her husband finished school and worked. In 2007, when her children were older and didn't seem to "need" her as much anymore, she returned to art and began creating mixed media pieces. In 2009, she discovered that her high school art teacher was wrong, and she could indeed sculpt. Creating dolls from polymer and paper clay was a fantastical way to bring her art to life. All the dolls come from Miss Millificent's World, a character she created in 2000: a skinny girl with a big head and even bigger eyes. Their stories are strange and sad and darkly whimsical without being trite. Nowadays you can still find her drawings and mixed media work around Nashville and occasionally the United States, and her dolls online. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband, two grown daughters, one dog, and two cats.