Georgia Perimeter College graduate Ida Harris is making a name for herself in the cultural arts arena.

A year ago, Harris began stitching handcrafted dolls using a sewing machine someone gave her and materials including leather, cloth—even human dreadlocks. She calls them Ba’beez, and each one enables Harris to explore a piece of the African-American female experience.

“Whether it’s abuse, neglect or poverty—what I’m able to do when I create a doll is give them this voice and it gives me, as a writer, a platform to bring those stories forward,” explains the native New Yorker.

Orders for Harris’ creations have come in from across the globe. A Facebook page dedicated to the dolls enables Harris to showcase them and post historically-relevant narratives and original poems. The dolls also are exhibited at art galleries and cultural arts centers and events throughout metro Atlanta.

This spring Harris showcased her creativity at the Georgia Women’s Conference, sponsored by GPC’s Diversity Alliance.

Georgia Perimeter theatre professor Sally Robertson was among the conference attendees. “Ida was so inspiring to talk with, and to know she had such a powerfully creative desire to make these dolls that she had to teach herself to sew and paint is a wonderful thing for our students to see,” Robertson says.

Yet, amid the adoration—with names such as Sojorna the Truth, Crucifixion and Black—Harris’ dolls have stoked some controversy. Many of the dolls features are overstated, and one is even half clothed.

“Some people look at [the dolls] and think [they’re] grotesque and that I’m trying to mock black people,” Harris says.

“In some ways I am exaggerating, and I do that to really put it in our faces that this is who we are and it’s really time to see ourselves in this light, but beautifully.”

Harris, mother to a teenage son, now studies writing and rhetoric at Georgia Gwinnett College after graduating from Georgia Perimeter last year. She credits a literature course taught by GPC’s Dr. Valerie Dotson for inspiring her Ba’beez.

Dotson, likewise, is a fan of Harris and her creations.

“I am so impressed with the way Ida uses her creative energies to translate the stories and experiences we discussed in our class with her doll making,” she says. “It was an awesome, full-circle moment when my students who attended the Georgia Women’s Conference came back to class and shared their experiences of Ida’s display.”