feel better

I made my first bundles after my mother died in 2007.  I was inspired by Magdalena Abakanowicz's burlap and sisal pieces that she made in 1978-80 entitled Embriology.  She made about 800 bundles in a variety of sizes.

I used soft batting at first (see here) and they took me about six months to carefully make. I was teased a bit, (Ned referred to them as hoo-doos), but I was coming to understand that it was the process of making that was helping me to deal with my recent personal trauma.

After them I began to wrap tree branches and clover stalks as a way to connect caring for the environment with a human metaphor of nurturing.

Although the good feelings would come over me as I wrapped the branches, the resulting bundles raised more complicated emotions.  The figures I made looked shrouded, not swaddled.  They looked mummified and sad. (see here if interested)

As an artist who wishes to communicate on an emotional level, this set up a challenge for me.  The bundles on the wall here are white with red thread, but they did not begin like this.  They have been wrapped three times.  They started off in 2011 as happy little things with four coniferous twigs wrapped in colourful cloth.  See here.

Over time, those twigs became bald and I needed to nurture them, and so wrapped them first with thick yarn, and then as you see here, with soft white cloth.

Arranging each of these little bundles in my hands, each one different from the next, gave me the same positive feelings as those first wrapped forms had.

In order to understand this perhaps you need to do it yourself.  The materials are here.  Make a bundle and take it home.

 Try it, you will feel better.

These images from my installation up until April 18 at la galerie du nouvel ontario in Sudbury, Ontario, part of a curated exhibition entitled Pop Folk Textiles  The text is from my little artist-talk at the vernissage.