Finals

I did it. I completed my first semester of graduate school. It was touch and go there for a minute, but once I found my stride, I had great fun and allowed myself to embrace being a real artist. I took a Feltmaking class and an Independent Study. Feltmaking was pretty amazing-there's something kind of magical about taking a bunch of wool fluff and turning it into whatever you want. My class was given a full month to work on our felt final. While my midterm project was really different from what I normally do, my final was very much like the rest of my work in that the structure was very repetitive and some might describe the whole thing as obsessive. I can't help it. That's just the kind of thing I like to do.

Felt pods in process

To get started, I made over 100 felt pods. I constructed them by winding natural colored wool roving over ping pong balls and, after felting them and allowing them to dry, I cut them in half, thus forming two little bowl shapes. Once they were off the ping pong ball, I finished felting the pods and allowed them to dry. The way I describe making them sounds simple but, trust me, it took so long and my hands spent so much time submerged in hot water and soap that I thought all the skin on them would fall off. Seriously, the tips of my fingers were blistered.


After I finished felting all the pods, the next step was to sew them together. I sewed them by hand, of course. I thought the individual pieces would look more round once they were all connected, but they took on kind of a honeycomb shape, which I think ended up working really well.

The front and back, after pods were sewn together

The concave side of the piece was intended to hold many, unique miniature sculptures. I like working small,

Paper sculptures in process

so this was the perfect project for me. I used mostly paper to construct them, as well as thread, wood, metal, and adhesive, among other things. I'm really pleased with how the little sculptures came out, so I'll likely make more of them in the future. It's interesting the shapes you can make with just scraps and glue.

Once I finished making the paper sculptures, I inserted them into the base piece and glued them into place. For my final critique, I hung the piece from the ceiling with fishing line so that it appeared to hover in mid-air and people could walk around the piece to view both sides. I spent so much time putting all of this together, probably more time than I've ever spent on any individual project, that I was definitely short on sleep in that week leading up to final critique, but it was all worth it. And I'd like to thank my wonderful feltmaking teacher, the lovely Dena Gershon, for helping me through all of our projects. She's a patient and inspiring teacher and I feel lucky for having the opportunity to learn from her.

Inserting the paper sculptures

My independent study class was interesting because I was allowed to make pretty much whatever I felt like. Once I finished a piece, I got to present it to the other grad students. It was really helpful to get meaningful feedback from them and it's so nice to be back working in a community with other artists. I mostly stuck to working with paper for that class, as it's the medium I'm most interested in. While I was able to combine the paper with felt in my feltmaking class, the paper pretty much stood on its own for independent study. My favorite piece turned out to be a sort of net I made out of thread and strips of paper with hand drawn hash marks on them. The picture doesn't do it justice, but I'm sure there are many more iterations of this one to come.

I'm pleased to say that I'm a straight A student and I have a lot of great ideas to work on in the future. I'm on break for a few weeks now and, although I'm grateful for this much-needed time off, I'm actually already looking forward to next semester. I'm taking another independent study as well as an art history class on Dada and Surrealism. I hope I have as much enthusiasm and fun as I did this semester. It's weird how I planned on going to school for so long and now I'm already finished with one semester. When long-term plans become a reality it's kind of surreal. But here I am, doing what I love and moving ahead. I couldn't be happier.

Mid-Term Project and Exhibit

To say that I have been busy over the past few months is an understatement. Between work and school and projects I had little free time and that free time was mostly spent sleeping. Now that I'm on break, it's time to play catch up. First, a review of my Feltmaking mid-term and some words about the exhibition I was in. I'll cover my final projects in another post since I have too much ground to cover. Next semester I'll have to be better about keeping up with the blog.

Laying out the wool roving for the base

The semester was amazing. Given that I was completely terrified about what was ahead the first couple of weeks of class, I was doubtful that things would turn out okay. But once I settled in I actually started to enjoy myself. By midterms I was really getting into classes and I made this really cool felt sculpture that looks kind of like a tentacled monster. Here it is, step-by-step.

Pre-Felt stage and adding felted spikes

I first felted the base of the project, laying it out flat. I knew I wanted the final piece to be sculptural but I decided to work flat and insert wire later on for shape. Once I laid the roving out, I pre-felted it and added felted spikes once the base dried. The spikes were insert from the inside out since the inside wouldn't be visible when the piece was complete.

Inserting rubber tubing as a resist

When I finished inserting all the spikes I began to sew in some rubber tubing as a resist. With the tubing in place, I could later come back and insert wire to form the piece into something three dimensional. This was by far the most time-consuming step of the project. Not only did I have to carefully hand-sew each of the lengths of tubing in so they wouldn't move around once I felted another layer over them, but I then had to remove all the stitches once they were secured so it wasn't visible from the outside.

The legs in their pre-felted stage.

Then it was on to the legs. The legs you see here are actually the second set I made. The first set didn't come together as nicely as I would have liked and I spent so much time and effort on the base of the project that I didn't want to ruin it all by attaching legs to it that didn't fit my high standard of quality. If something is worth doing, it's worth doing right, right? Anyway, I constructed the legs by winding the wool roving around some flexible armature wire. I did two layers of contrasting colors so that I could cut multicolored stripes into them after the pre-felt stage.                        



Once the legs were finished and dry, I was able to start assembling the finished piece. I cut holes in the

Assembling the finished piece

middle of the base and threaded the legs through. After that, I flipped the piece over and sewed the petal structures together so it would form a sort of pod shape. It didn't turn out exactly like I thought it would, which was a little disappointing, but I did learn a lot while creating this piece. Sometimes messing up is the best lesson there is. I intended for the petals to all come up into a point, but the structure was too wide for them to all come together, so it wound up being open on top. Next time I'll make a better pattern so things match up the way I envision them.  I also would have liked the legs to support the pod but they weren't strong enough in the end. Next time I'll use a thicker gauge wire.

Finished piece, top view

 In any case, I really like the finished piece, flaws and all. It's something I worked really hard on and it's completely different than anything I've ever made before. It was nice to get out of my comfort zone and attempt something totally new. Although this piece was quite a departure from my normal style of art, I do like it and I see myself making similar items in the future.

Finished piece, side view

Around the time I was working on this felt piece, I also had the chance to be part of the Morgan Conservatory's annual open house exhibition and silent auction. I donated a piece made entirely of origami folded paper, sewn onto a 2ft by 2ft canvas. I made the piece over the summer and was so proud to finally see it displayed for all to see. The open house was great fun, with live music and amazing food and my piece even got auctioned for a respectable amount. I already can't wait for next year's event.

Me, smiling next to my lovely piece