All of the miniatures on this page have been created by Judith M. Sachs who is our February Featured Artist

Please feel free to email Judith at: judithm@tinytwistedtheatre.com

Judith M. Sachs creates miniature dioramas and vignettes elaborating on her jewelry skills and talent for storytelling. Her themes embody haunting nightmares, humor, and macabre but magical stories. By using skeletons as her dolls in her strange, dark and amusing creations, Judith changes even the most mundane daily event into an experience of wonderful nightmares.   A side dish of crazy kitties keeps the observer’s eyes roaming around the scene to try and catch every ’Tiny Twisted’ moment of these amazing scenes just like Theatre!  Hence the Name, Tiny Twisted Theatre.

In 1996 Judith found new life by moving to San Francisco, adopted her adoring Siamese cat, Max and met her husband Byron.  After owning and managing a very hip clothing boutique on Union Street and another in North Beach, Judith turned to designing Victorian and Gothic Jewelry.  Her pieces sold in boutiques on Union Street and in Hayes Valley in San Francisco until one day 5 years later the jewelry idea felt stale.  She started putting miniature pieces into her artwork but that wasn’t what she was looking for.  Out of nowhere Judith started creating little scenes with more and more miniatures which led to searching for the right doll.  That’s how the search for little skeletons came about. 

“I’d be the first one to tell you I never dreamt of a dollhouses as a kid, I was too much of a tomboy, but somehow miniatures started to capture my attention as I got older.  Then one day I picked up a little 6” skeleton at the Halloween store and the ideas for a scary dollhouse began.  My selection of the very special skeletons took over 6 months to find. They had to be the right ones to work in context that had just the right amount of detail in their tiny features but also would be able to be posed.  The backgrounds and floorboards are made by hand with rocks or wooden sticks, painted with the right texture depending on the look I’m after. Most of the furnishings like the ghosts in the mirrors (a signature technique) are handmade as are the framed ghost pictures.” 

"Pieces are very time consuming with larger dioramas taking as much as 60 hours or more to create.  There are always enormous amounts of time spent looking for that particular piece to fit into the scene or creating a special design by hand.  I learned early on that patience was key to getting to a finished piece of artwork.”

Recently Judith has been working on 4”-10” cloches showing another example of her “Tiny Twisted Theatre” only in little bubbles of creation!  Commissions are happily accepted.  Send her a budget, a list of things you enjoy for example, reading, shopping, sports or whatever makes you happy (with or without cats or perhaps dogs). You can email her if you would like to have your own personal story in a vignette, or a gift.