Artwork

Sale of The Felted Flock

Artwork / August 4, 2024 / By

I am not sure I really believed the Felted Flock would sell but I did hope for that outcome. Now that outcome has become reality, and I feel many things, including amazement and a good dollop of pride.

In case you have forgotten all about it, the Felted Flock is a collection of needle felted sheep and other animals who hang around them and/or are needed by them. The general intention behind creating was to share the voluminous story of growing wool and to highlight where fibre comes from. It was a two year art project that I finished December 2022.

Here’s the scoop on the sale. Earlier this year I was approached by an employee from SK Arts and after several back and forth exchanges Sask Arts made an offer to purchase half of the number of felted sheep along with every supporting character – so the guardians dogs, the stock dog, the fox, the coyote, the shearers, the shepherd, the crows, the magpies, and the wee cowbird. The new home for this downsized version of the felted flock is the Permanent Art Collection of Saskatchewan.

This sale means that the felted flock collection is archived and inventoried in an art collective, and when it’s not being shown it is held in storage by an organization with that capability. It took me about a week to decide on the sale and while there were a few terms and conditions to be navigated it felt right the whole way through and the process was rather seamless. The first showing of the flock is planned for this summer/fall in Regina, SK.  And because it resides in the permanent art collection, the Felted Flock is also available for any provincial gallery to rent for exhibition, and vignettes are available to be used as part of group shows.

Upon hearing the news friends have asked if it was hard to sell and the answer is yes and no. It was exciting to make the sale; a sale such as this is an amazing opportunity and nearly every artist’s dream. What was hard was letting go of my vision for the felted flock and allowing a new vision to reside in someone else’s hands. Because from here on, where and how the collection is set up and shown is in someone else hands. That is still hard and may always be hard, I don’t know. But I am eased with having the felted sheep that did not go with the collection to now do with as I please. And since these are no longer part of the felted flock I feel free to give them a new creative outlook. And so that is what I am doing. I am giving them a new look and making them into the prairie sheep collective. A couple of these are already on display at the Watrous Art Gallery and more will most likely head off to an art boutique in Saskatoon. I’ll share their makeover here on the blog as well so stay tuned.

Artwork at Work

Artwork / June 29, 2024 / By

A prairie dweller, a keeper of sheep, a devoted fan of working dogs, an artist, and a wanna be writer….  I attempt at least one of these things on any given day, and occasionally I manage to be all of them.

The longer I practice creating the more difficult it is for me to come up with any deep philosophical artist statement that rings true. I make repeated attempts to capture prairie life and moments with the animals around me and put them onto paper or felt them into being with wool, and once in awhile succeed.

I entered a handful of those successes into an adjudicated art show at the local gallery this past May where they received the equivalent of honorable mention, worthy of showing. What is more interesting though is the critique received. The criticism was precisely on point with the hiccups I felt when making each piece. My hiccups are felt as a drop in the gut, short and quick, and easily missed if not paying attention. At the time of making I felt the hiccup but did not recognize a solution because I couldn’t quite nail down what the hiccup was in the piece, or I didn’t want to, – I needed to get pieces done in time. I negated the nudge.

I’ve come to thoroughly enjoy adjudicated art shows for the critique.  Dissecting the art is a reminder of how meaning is conveyed, or how it misses the mark, and that both inklings pass across the ether to complete strangers. It is a marvel to watch artwork at work in this way. It reminds me of all the times this place, this landscape of our farm and flock, has had an affect on people who visited it. It is affirmation of the importance of artwork in our lives.

Paint what you love is the oft given advice and I have taken that to heart. My artwork and my livelihood are closely aligned. Writing, drawing and felting are not work per se; certainly not the work that the real flock is. Instead these pursuits are reason and purpose to help me face and fulfill each day in this place that is plump with nature but empty of people, empty of response to the work. Even on the days when every creative attempt woefully misses the mark there is satisfaction of having shown up to try again; because trying is reaching for the ether itself and aiming to exist there.

A Prairie Place Sans Social Media

Artwork, Musing, Prairie / June 26, 2024 / By

I determined some time ago that cell phones do not jive with this reclusive prairie space and there is very, very seldom a valid reason to take mine along on my daily walks. With no phone at hand, social media does not exist while in this prairie space either. I began to notice how exquisite not scrolling on a screen felt. This noticing would often be followed by rounds of internal questioning about why social media was in my life if its absence felt so good.

two dogs on prairie trail

One morning, well over a year ago, I decided to not post on instagram that day. I did the same thing the next day, and the next. I had already been down a rabbit hole of researching the impact of social media as the current models are set up, and I was angry at myself for succumbing to the habit. But after days of not posting I figured I had made a mistake. I was lost, I was ‘disconnected’. I was feeling very much left out, particularly as an artist trying to find my way through marketing. But each day as I walked the dogs out on the prairie I would feel the ‘rightfulness’ of having no social media concerns there. I hung onto that feeling of rightfulness and stuck by my decision to not post. I picked up a physical paper book to distract myself and discovered just how short my ability to focus was, and how badly I missed reading books. After a few weeks I hardly missed IG but what stood out stronger than ever was the continual push by the rest of the world to prove one’s validity by being on social. This has not ceased at all.

I had plans to replace posting on IG with diving deeper into other online avenues, like this blog, but I ended up walking away from all of it. I stopped writing my newsletter regularly, I nearly stopped posting to the blog, and there have been no posts to pinterest in forever. I had no clue what this state of emptying out was about, although in hindsight, I think it was a means of debriefing where I was going and what I was still interested in doing. Unexpectedly, that debrief took many months.

Without social media and with a lot less screen time in everyday life, I have long focus back and I have additional time to spend in my studio. A corner of the kitchen counter has become the landing place for any recently acquired books, awaiting a read. Falling in love with reading again, lead to encouragement for writing again. I have joined a local writers group; where meetings with people who are physically and mentally present take place, sans phones. And when I am in my studio, instead of logging on to an app I log-in to my sketch book, a habit that has done more for my drawing skills than any other. I’m now dabbling in watercolor painting. I’ve been more creative in the last year than in the past three. No video reel has been made to document any of it and it will not see the light of day on social media platforms. But the local community is seeing the best parts of it, and that feels far less fraudulent.

Felted wool artwork
‘In Companionable Silence’ / Felted wool artwork

Fifteen months later I’m still opting for digital minimalism in my life, or to put it another way, applying the approach I use on the land to being online. One must always consider the whole, not just the parts. When and if the time comes for dipping a toe back into social media, I’ll know what to watch for, I’ll know that my creative self will not break when I walk out on the rat race and take the scenic route.