Cairn

Sculpture

Recently I became excited by the possibility of creating 3D works in felt. This is something I have briefly explored in the past in the creation of felt vessels, however these were relatively small scale and I wanted to

create a large piece that would have a big impact.

I was looking at Journeys and narrative as a theme which led on to the creation of the cairn.

Cairn n 1. a pile of stones built as a memorial or landmark, e.g. At the top of  mountain.

As a child I often went to the Lake District and remember searching for stones to place on these piles that are way-markers, there to guide people on the safe path.

Now as an adult and an artist I remembered these sculptural forms. To come across one you naturally have to make a journey so it fitted with the first criteria. For the narrative concept I thought of how cairns are created — various people search out the stone that appeals to them the most and then place it where they choose on the pile. As I thought of this I realized    

    

that each person, whether they were conscious of it or not, was involved in the creation of a sculpture. One that evolved over time through weather, erosion and more “artists” adding to the piece. Consequently, each stone has a single person’s history or narrative behind it. Once I realized this I couldn’t not make a cairn, it was set in stone so to speak. 

 

I knew it was of paramount importance that my sculpture had some of the same sense of individual history behind it as the cairns in the landscape. So whilst I was making felt balls I thought about how to achieve this. I started making these balls in October but two weeks in I had a setback when I was hospitalized with pneumonia. By

December I was feeling much better and back to making balls. As it was Christmas time I had a lot of people visiting and they were all intrigued with these piles of white felt balls lying around the house and studio. 

That was when I realized I had found the individual history behind the sculpture. From then on everyone who visited the house was given some wool and shown how to make a ball.

When I had a large quantity of balls I started constructing the sculpture. I used chicken wire as the mould and tied hessian onto this so that I had the 3D structure to glue the balls onto. As I continued gluing I became aware of just how many balls the piece was going to take, I would have a basket filled with 40 balls and they would just be absorbed into the structure. It took a bag full of eight local fleeces to complete the sculpture.