The Start of Something New

I’ve been in the studio today, finishing a piece that marks the start of something new: an exploration of soft sculpture and making this from new techniques to my art practice. It has been my aim this year to learn crochet (among other things including hand building ceramics, knitting and new dress making techniques - I have learnt two of those skills so far).

Using crochet and 100% recycledherry red cotton, I have begun making rope to recreate a memory of a trip to Australia. Travelling along the empty roads, outside of Darwin and on our way to some natural springs with my sisters, they pointed out these alien-like sculptures at the side of the road every so often. They were termite hills. Some were the size of toddlers, some bigger. It looked otherworldly, these red-brown mounds of dirt shaped like rounded pyramids. It felt, for some reason, bizarre. What made it even more surreal was that people had put t-shirts on some of the termite hills to make them look like these sort of headless little people. I was also pregnant at the time so perhaps this weird happening and their childlike resemblance stuck with me more so.

I had forgotten about this moment until recently I had the urge to chainstitch rope and create small hills. What came back to me was my time in Darwin and these t-shirt wearing termite hills. Below is a start of what’s to come. Can’t wait to show the finished piece!

Work in progress: crochet rope termite hill using cherry red recycled cotton with screen printed cotton strip memory attached.