Tag Archives: wool

Freedom

03 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by in Make, Think

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As a 17-year-old starting college, freedom meant one thing to me: escape. New experiences, different faces, starting over in a world that didn’t know me and couldn’t make my choices for me. That thirst for independence is a natural part of growing up, and I certainly had quite a bit of growing up to do. But I think I was missing an integral notion of what it means to be free.

It took me a long while to realize that freedom is not synonymous with control. The freedom to live, speak, and worship as I desire are priceless to me, and I do not take them for granted. However, personal freedom also means being willing to take chances: in work, in play, and most of all in relationships and letting people in close. Without the courage to love and ask to be loved by others, freedom looks an awful lot like just being alone.

For me, real freedom also means crawling out from under the stifling hood of perfectionism and expectation. Freedom does not guarantee pleasure, but it does ensure that I move forward and learn. To be free is to open myself up to mistakes with the conviction that I am also opening myself up to growth, to finding new ways and new passions.

I could cook only the recipes I already know; paint only pictures for which I have practiced the brushstrokes; stick with the books already on the shelf and the names already in my address book. I would certainly have increased measures of comfort and security in doing so, and that sort of smug satisfaction that comes from doing it “right.” But freedom? No, I would not have that.

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The piece of art above is titled Be Free, and it’s a multimedia collage using vintage papers, vellum, and a hand-made felted landscape. I have felted before, but never to achieve a flat, representational design. I love how it turned out, in part because I took a step into my personal artistic unknown to create it.

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Praying you find the freedom today to imagine and hope, to take risks and build in new directions.

It’s a small world

15 Thursday Dec 2011

Posted by in Make, Read

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As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a sucker for life in miniature. (It dawns on me that perhaps it’s not coincidence that we own a toy poodle and a chihuahua…) While there is a time and place for chocolate chip cookies that require two hands, I generally gravitate toward the bite-size. And in the studio, I love the challenge of small, intricate artwork. If life is in the details, I’m living well. :)

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It should come as no surprise, then, that I was so excited to read Microcrafts: Tiny Treasures to Make and Share by Margaret McGuire and friends. It contains patterns and pictures for 25 little whimsical projects. Among my favorites are matchbox-size felt monster babies, walnut shell sailboats, and mini-fabric bunting just crying out to decorate the top of birthday cupcakes. However, there was no contest for which piece I would try first: as soon as I saw the itty-bitty solar system mobile, I was already reaching for my art supplies.

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I recently tried my hand at felting for the first time (the process of making handmade felt from wool roving), so I already had a bin full of hand-dyed alpaca wool waiting to be turned into little planets. The process itself was fairly simple and the only other requirements were soapy, warm water, a bamboo mat (like the type sushi is rolled on), and a little patience.

This turned out to be a great do-together for my daughter and I, as we took turns rolling and shaping the wool into various heavenly bodies. (The only drawback was that our hands smelled like wet alpaca for days. I can now add “smelling like a llama left out in the rain” to my list of Weird Things I’ve Done for Art.) The finished felted spheres range in size from 3/4″ to 1 1/2″ in diameter, and as you can see from the pictures above, they are a fraction of the size of the wool balls with which we began.

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After a day of drying time, assembling the mobile was also pretty straightforward — just a matter of threading embroidery floss through each piece and tying them on. I harvested a couple of twigs from the tree in our front yard to use as the hanging frame (quite possibly the only useful contribution a Bradford pear tree ever made). I already knew my complete lack of scale wouldn’t be winning me any new astrophysicist friends, so I threw in Pluto too. Really, how could I possibly make a miniature solar system model and not include our diminutive neighbor? (Don’t worry Pluto, you’ll never be too small for me.)

(Microcrafts, Quirk Books: 2011, ISBN 978-1594745218)