Woolen City : Wearable Architecture

The last weeks of 2010 were a whirlwind of working. I've been meaning to post all the works bit by bit, and here's the first. This is one I've been working on for quite some time, and I greatly underestimated how much work it would be. It's a Woolen City: wearable wire wrapped in grey wool yarn. After constructing the armature, I built up pyramids, domes, towers, skyscrapers, caves and arches. Each bit of wire was then wrapped in grey wool yarn, creating a slightly fuzzy line drawing of architecture. It's a wearable urban structure that has just a bit of coziness from the yarn, and the citizen wearing it can feel the scale of a city/citizen relationship shift.

Wish You Were Here : postcard show

This is the latest piece I've been working on. It was made for A.I.R. Gallery's Wish You Were Here show, which opened on June 23. A show of postcards- this one was made thinking about getting lost in maps of housing developments, cul de sacs, mazes. The loneliness that can come with outstretched communities of solid residential zoning- suburbia. These places can isolate just on the nature of their expansive separateness. That's not to say that cities cannot isolate. Living in the largest city in the country has its loneliness. I am surrounded by people, but there is not much connection. We are isolated pockets of communities, existing one on top of the other. The lives of those people just living on my block are all so very different the one from the other. It's really amazing to think of all of these separate lives existing in the same square feet. And when we speak to each other, it can be inspiration and invigorating. It's just finding that opening. Making the human connection. Finding the people who can grow into valued, trusted and dependable friends. The ones that last a lifetime.


The process of making this piece was delicious. I used annealed steel wire and methodically created the shapes. It was like meditation- like knitting, like weaving: the repeating structures over and over, building up the whole. I then used bits of the wire to "staple" the piece onto the paper. The created shadows are making me very happy. It was nice to work with such a restrained size- especially after my over-ambitiously sized P2P piece. A lesson in scale for sure. Things to remember, to store in my mind for later.

llot llov light love

I came across these lights in researching wire and wool for a work in progress, and had to share them. They are from llot llov - a collaboration with la la berlin. Wire can be such a beautiful sketching tool, and of course I am partial to the knitting and wrapped wool. Such a delicious mix of hard and soft, light and grey, sweet and distressed.

What is on the progress list for me currently is wire and wool- it has been slow going since summer 09, but i have a deadline of 4 weeks from today, so I have hit a stride. However, after wrapping all the wire to make the connections between pieces, it occurred to me that a soldering iron might make my life much easier, not to mention quicken my pace significantly. So, it's off to soldering research for me! I love adding tools to my collection. The more tools and skills that are mastered, the more precise an idea can be executed... must keep learning! there is so much to learn.

wire, rope, cement and growth

I'm currently working on a proposal for a 16x30' sculpture on the side of a building. Tonight I'll construct the moquette with wire and rope. The joy of writing proposals is that everything must be true and correct, but the work does not have to be actually done yet and you don't have to worry so much quite yet about where you're going to get the money to weld together a 16x30 foot sculpture on the side of a concrete wall with wire and rope and plantings.