An independent artist from Kelowna has created a fantasy-themed world filled with high-end art for what he calls, the ‘World of Eezoes.’
“World of Eezoes is something that I accidentally started developing back in 2019. The first-ever art doll that I made and it was inspired by this community I found online of these people that create and make and sell or trade all these different art dolls,” said Eezos creator, Ian Hookham.
“Which is kind of, more of an artistic doll.”
After being inspired by other artists’ creations online, Hookham began to create his own and the World of Eezoes came to life.
“I was bored one day and thought I’d give it a try,” said Hookham.
“I got some fabric, got some clay, sculpted the little face, put it all together and I made this little forest creature, that I thought was kind of cool.”
Hookham thought the doll would have been his first and last until he put it on social media and people became interested in purchasing his creation.
“I made two more and put them in my shop that I had at the time and after a couple of weeks, they sold. I never had that happen, for something that was original work,” said Hookham.
The name of the creatures, ‘Eezoes’ was born after speaking with his friend, who can speak many different languages. Together, Hookham and his friend mixed several ways of saying ‘moss’ in different languages and came up with ‘Eezoes.’
“So, then the Eezoes species was created, and then I started making more, and making more, and then they started selling faster and people were messaging me, asking about them,” said Hookham.
Hookham merges real-life animal elements with his own fantasy ideas to create the unique look of the Eezoes creations.
The creations have taken on a life of their own, with a book in the works, and a soon-to-be-released colouring book.
“I started to come up with different stories and scenarios that these creatures would be in. I started developing things that other people would be interested in because not everyone is interested in collecting art dolls,” said Hookham.
Hookham says, at some point, he would like to get into creating comics or animated shows with the World of Eezoes creatures.
His works of art can be found on his social media account including Instagram and Facebook.