Musings – Page 9 – Wool Stone & Prairie

The Felted Flock Farm to Gallery

Artwork / January 11, 2023 January 22, 2023 / By admin

With the opportunity to display the felted flock in a small, local gallery space so soon after its conclusion there was a good deal of reflecting on how to best capture the nuances that unfolded as the project grew in number. It began as a way to share the story of growing wool but what emerged is a mix of tangible effort and intangible reason for doing whatever it is we feel driven to do.

The tangible effort is the work of keeping livestock and growing wool - winter feeding, shearing, sorting, lambing, grazing. We can do the work in a manner that suits us, and our actions will be generally understood as the necessary work. We expect the work and plan for it thus it is fair to say we are the ones driving the work.

The intangible reasons are the occurrences that link us to nature - the prairie, coexistence, shepherding, death of an animal. These occurrences also remind us that the nature within us is one and the same as the nature we’re dealing with daily. These reasons are less easy to define and make understood. More often than not they happen when nature says they need to, thus it is fair to say Nature is driving them.

To have sustainable agriculture, to live a life based on personal truth, to pursue artistic callings, both tangible effort and intangible reason must bear weight and be present in our process. When we focus only on work and production without honouring any intangible reason life is an intensive, heavy beast. And when we focus only on the intangible reason without emphasis on tangible actions life is only a light weight pipe dream. Creating the felted flock took a huge dollop of both tangible effort and intangible reason. Many times throughout the project I wondered about the amount of time, effort and the reasons, and now at the conclusion of it, I wonder even more.

p.s. The show is open to the public each Saturday in January, 2023 from 1 - 4 pm. The location is the Gallery on Third in the town of Watrous, SK.

The Felted Flock Growing Pains

Artwork / January 4, 2023 January 4, 2023 / By admin

As the Felted Flock grew it morphed into a narrative more broad than I anticipated when I embarked on the project. As I shared it online it also began to take on meaning for other people. I’ve never had this experience of artwork being watched and looked at before it is finished.

There is one struggle that stuck out through the project and is still evident at the conclusion of it. Any description of the project falls woefully short of the scope of it. Verbally telling that you are felting a flock of sheep doesn’t cut it in terms of interest value. When the flock is viewed in real life though it astounds, it causes reaction, it invites a further and longer look. In hindsight, five or even twenty five sheep would not have sufficed, this had to be a flock of significant number, with as many extra characters as I could add within a reasonable time frame.

The felted flock was shared in public four times over the two years of creating it. The fifth time happens this week and is the first time for sharing the entire, complete collection. The first public showing was at a local art show and that was when I knew the project had impact beyond what I could tell people about. A similar depth of response was had the next three times it was set up in public.

As the flock grew its storyline and meaning grew with it. As I created it there were so many parallels emerging between the created flock and the real one feeding out on the pasture. But this is where lack of momentum would often strike and I’d be at a loss for ways to describe what I was seeing in the project. And also at a loss for how to keep up with all of it. For the upcoming fifth showing I’ve been reflecting on how to tweak the display to represent the broader story and micro scenes that have emerged. I set up the show tomorrow so I’ll have more on that to share in the next post.

The Felted Flock Naive Beginnings

Artwork / January 1, 2023 January 1, 2023 / By admin

Three years ago the idea for the felted flock arrived to mind during a walk. “you should felt your flock” was the out of the blue statement that popped to mind. The concept of taking wool from the ewes and using the fibre to create a flock and make handmade versions of scenes of daily living with sheep, was very appealing. Using wool and creativity to present a visual of all that takes place with land and animal in order to grow wool seemed relevant enough to share.

The idea was immediately exciting to me but also immediately too big and too crazy. I dismissed it. The idea persisted and a year later, when I was feeling very stagnant in my other felting work, I conceded too giving it a try because it was, at the least, a change from what I was doing. In hindsight it’s probably prudent to note that at the beginning there was a woeful lack of what lay ahead, and how much the project would shift itself and me before the end. This lack of knowing what lay ahead certainly contributed to me jumping in willingly.

I have been a disciplined task master for a long time. I have the solid habit of getting up early in the morning and doing something I like to do (for me that’s artwork, photography or writing). This served me well with tackling a two year project like the Felted Flock because I didn’t need to form the habit of making time to be creative at the same time that I was trying new creative work. I just needed to tackle learning new work and then keep going. What I didn’t know was how hard the keep going part was going to be.

At the onset, there were several fingerling ideas of how to visually and artistically share the story of what takes place before the fibre we love ever reaches our hands. Some of these micro scenes have been successful in catching attention but a few of these fingerling ideas did not see the light of day because in the midst of the project my momentum faded.

The workload of artist and of farming are alike in how broad they feel. In both endeavours the work is large with an end that keeps receding. I would lose momentum and then get it back and then lose it again. There were days when I lamented having to do the real work with the real sheep because all I wanted to do was felting. And there were days when I all I wanted to do was spend time with the real sheep because I didn’t want to return to felting.

At the start of the project (October 2020) I did not know how to form wool into shape, I was a novice to three dimensional felting and the learning curve is steep. Making the wire armature to proportion was and still is the biggest hurdle.

There were so many early mornings sitting at a table felting sheep; whether for twenty minutes or for two hours, whether in artistic bliss or in sheer frustration at yet another throw away. Recently I placed the first and the 121st sheep made side by side and took a photo.

That photo represents curiosity, refinement, defeat, frustration, persistence, patience, triumph, and growth. All the ways I have been fine tuned right alongside the work. What I never took a photo of is all the characters that landed in the trash.