Throughout each of her 87 years, Irene Graham has possessed a deep-rooted love of the arts.

"My imagination likes to be busy," she said.

From her home in Federal Way, the sculptor, painter and talented doll maker has crafted a lifetime of award-winning pieces.

Portraits of angels adorn her walls, clay sculptures have turned her living room into a fine art gallery, and an army of dolls-lifelike with stunning details in their cherub faces-signify the unfathomable number of hours Graham has spent in pursuit of her passion.

A master with her hands, Graham continues to sculpt her creative self as she has since she was a young girl.

Born in Buer, Germany, Graham said that her teachers began noticing her talent blossom at a very young age. She told the Federal Way News last week that she first began earning notoriety as an artist in Kindergarten (German preschool), when her instructor had the class sculpt objects out of modeling clay.

"I think they began to notice right away that I had some natural talent," Graham said as straightened the outfit on one of her dolls. "Most of the students were making worms, and I made a farm house with a fence and animals."

In more than eight decades since, she still maintains the same acute attention to detail; a skill that has helped her infuse a heavy dose of realism into her dolls.

Thin, hand-painted eyelashes, touch-able flushed cheeks and immaculate outfits have helped Graham bring home the Grand Champion award at the Puyallup Fair on multiple occasions.

Graham began her professional art career as a painter. One of her first and arguably most striking pieces hangs on the wall in her sewing room. The image of a pensive Saint Andrew came to her in a meditation, she said.

"It was a meditative-type painting," Graham said. "You never know what you're going to get on the paper."

Graham enjoyed the image so much that she decided to sculpt a bust of the saint out of clay.

Her small hands molded the figure out of 75 pounds of material, until the sharp face and full beard took shape. The piece, which Graham said took countless hours to create, sits proudly displayed in her living room.

"And the rest," she said, referring to her living room filled with sculptures crafted by her own hand, "is just a spin-off from that drawing."

Her technique improved out of her desire to constantly improve the work she created.

From sculpting, Graham began to search for new artistic outlets.

"From there, I began to make outdoor gnomes, and later, inside ones," she said.

The venture yielded a new technique among gnome makers, developed entirely by Graham.

The artist begins with a wire frame and sculpts the hands and face with modeling clay, which is then lightly fired in a kiln. Once fired, the faces and hands are covered in cloth and painted.

The technique gives the dolls' faces a skin-like texture, and the fabric gives the gnomes a weathered and wrinkled complexion complementing their Santa-esque white beards.

"It's a relatively new process and an entirely new idea at the time," said Graham of her technique. "It was copyrighted in 1979."

The copyright cost her $35, and she keeps it filed away in a drawer in her studio.

After gnomes, Graham decided to take lessons in the art of making porcelain dolls.

"It's something that I had never done before," said Graham, who has since evolved into a champion doll maker.

"Now," she added, "I make my own molds for the faces."

She opened the door of her small porcelain studio, a quaint and delightfully cluttered room where her creations, which she has collectively named Fairy People, take shape.

Graham demonstrated the small kiln where she fires the hands and faces of her dolls, and she pointed out the dozens of handmade molds that cast the figurines' tiny faces.

She modeled several of the molds, she said, after the faces of her children.

"I sculpted my daughter's little face years ago," Graham said, "and I used the sculpture to help me create my first doll mold."

Knocking on the door of 90, Graham said she has no plans of giving up her craft anytime soon.

In fact, she said that creative expression has helped her remain feeling young.

She hopes a younger generation of artists will find the same satisfaction in detail and patience that has kept her creating art throughout her lifetime.

Their biggest obstacle, she believes, is removing the distractions of modern technology and unlocking their imaginations.

"I learned a lot from my Italian grandmother," Graham said. "She could make something out of nothing."

Graham described how her grandmother blended a cloth rag and some clothespins with a child's imagination to create a doll from what little they had.

"Being poverty-striken helps improve the imagination," Graham said.

"But for kids nowadays," Graham said, "everything is pre-done for them."

"That's not creation, that's not creative," she said. "But if you teach children to make something from scratch - out of nothing - it's healthier for kids."