Month: September 2022

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Blue Reach

Three blue felted shapes drying on tray

I finally remembered to bring this grasping/clasping cuff to a photo shoot with Steve Mann of Black Box Photography to document it properly. It’s only been about 5 years since I made it! Blue Reach now has a featured spot on my website under the Adorned WORKS Gallery, BRACELETS and can be viewed in the rotation of images on the HOME page.

Blue felt abstract shapes on white background
Blue felted bracelet with loops and spheres

While preparing samples for one of the two courses I had offered at Maiwa School of Textiles in the fall of 2017, Felt Secure: Solid Form Felting Techniques for Clasps & Closures, I had the wild idea of taking all my class samples and attaching them to one plane to make a cuff. It has proven to be a good means to keep all those components in one place, but also to address the need for connection, particularly when one is feeling blue. There are both outward protuberating clasp components, as well as receiving holes, hoops, bridges and tunnels.

Blue abstract felted wool on paper towel
Blue textured abstract shapes on black ribbed surface

It’s timely to have gotten these pics and to share them in this post on my website’s blog, INTRIGUE, as I am working on the content development of Course 2 in my Online & Onpoint! Felt Jewelry Series: Material, Technique & Impact this Fall of 2022. Course 2 will focus on the use of Partial Felt in solid form, 2D plane and hollow form wet felting and will be made in a range of initial layout weights/area and felted to different states of integrity (% of shrinkage) of what is possible for that weight/area. One such application will be using Partial Felt as a core as related to how participants of Course 1 developed solid forms. I got soooo excited about stepping the learning up from the Foundational Structure studies of Course 1 while revisiting each of these clasping components for a little shaving and snipping of stray hairs before the photos.

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Intertwining Lives & Lines

Felted wool branch with knotted tendrils
Felted wool branch with knotted tendrils

I’ve been working in the studio on additional adjustable clasping necklaces in my Mechanoreception Series that I started this past July 2022. I began conceiving of this work, however, when I came across masses of worm tubes on Florida’s gulf coast beaches in December of 2021… my first excursion during the isolating COVID restrictions. Not familiar with the word mechanoreception? It’s an animals reaction to external stimuli such as touch, pressure, vibrations and sound or rather its ability to react to such. I’m a little preoccupied by the anthropomorphic behaviors of the Annelid class of tube building worms as related to their dwelling in dense masses, yet each in an isolated silo as well as their quick recoil to external stimuli. The meshwork of their tubes is also a fantastic representation of the intertwinement of wool filaments in felt that is otherwise hardly visible with the human eye.

Porous honeycomb coral rocks on concrete
White knotted necklace with red-tipped ends
Mechanoreception 3, extended vs closed
White knotted rope necklace with red accent

The choice of an adjustable clasp that opens up the neckpiece to a larger circumference and also closes it down is informed by the operculum of the Serpulidae family of Polychaeta tube worms, a little door that blocks the entrance to their silo when they retract. 

I was paying particular attention to the extended state of the cords before introducing my external force to act out their knotting and recoiling. It reminded me of a country road with quite some space between where smaller roads intersect, like out by my maternal grandparents farm in Avoca, Michigan or the roads that rambled off from highway 522 north of Taos, New Mexico where I lived in the late 90’s. I associate the dominance of space between lines in real time or when viewing a map with sparse populations and calm. Some people feel vulnerable in open space, but it is there that I feel possibility, the possibility of movement.

Minimalist branch-like wall sculptures with red tips

It is no wonder that I have a fondness for laying my filaments of wool ridiculously thin to felt a 2D plane, like the country roads on a map. It is the space between those filaments that allows for the extraordinary movement and intertwinement that results in high shrinkage, strong, yet still flexible felt. I’ve always preferred living in the small towns between those spacious lines on a map and travelling inward to the denser population grids upon occasion. I’ve always felt a bit sensory sensitive, more of a country mouse if you will.