“Growth 3” was a delight to make, with some important learning along the way. The first piece with this title consists of a lot of glass+ textile for the 3rd Glass+Textile Salon in February, so I won’t show it here yet, as we’ve been asked to not publish entries before the juried exhibition, fingers X.
I’ll put a loop or two on the back of Growth 3 so that if someone wants to place it on a wall just as it is, that will be very easy, and carefully chosen framing could suit it too, although I designed it as a tabletop piece. There will be more ‘stuffed puffs’ coming soon, but I’ll pack the stuffing less firmly in them, so they are easier to ‘nestle’ up against each other and stitch into place.
With such firm stuffing, sewing it together was both finicky and required a bit of muscle power at times. In this next image I’ve covered over some of the gathering points and stitching over with fine, soft grey felt, which tidies it up a bit. And though I never mind showing ‘the artist’s hand’, covering those more extreme textured areas in my opinion elevates the level of craftsmanship a little – and good craftsmanship never goes out of style IMHO. It’s signed in tiny permanent ink letters on the back of one of the metallic puffs.
“Growth 2” was a small ~13m diameter piece, gifted to a fellow fibre artist :
Apart from making some cloth bags for this and other small 3D pieces to protect the beaded and sequined surfaces as the pieces are moved about, yesterday I decided I liked the trial, experimental way I had mounted this little piece inspired by a 2020 Clarissa Callesen workshop, so signed it in very small letters on the front, put the title on the back, and now it’s quite ready for my exhibition, too.
