This past week I have been waging an epic battle twixt needle-felter and beast! The very word whale prompts a nod to the most famous ones in literature. The Old Testaments nasty whale ( from Jonah 1:4 to Jonah 2:10 ) and Herman Melville's "Moby Dick." Two actual events were the fodder for Melville's tale. One was the sinking of the Essex in 1820, after it was rammed by a large sperm whale. A first mate wrote of the event in 1821 in a book titled "Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex."
The other event was the alleged killing in the late 1830s of the albino sperm whale Mocha Dick, in the waters off the Chilean island of Mocha. He was rumored to have twenty or so harpoons in his back from other whalers and appeared to attack ships with premeditated ferocity.
My contribution is neither antagonistic or albino It is somewhat the physiology of a sperm whale though the true representation of the species would be black and maybe barnacled. We'll call him "Starbuck" after the upstanding chief mate of the Pequod. ( Interesting side note from Wikipedia is that the famous coffee chain was named to honor this character after the original suggestion "Pequod's" was rejected.)
Melville struggled with composition, writing to Richard Henry Dana, Jr. on May 1, 1850:
"I am half way in the work ... It will be a strange sort of book, tho', I fear; blubber is blubber you know; tho' you might get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree; — and to cook the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fancy, which from the nature of the thing, must be ungainly as the gambols of the whales themselves. Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing, spite of this."
When I read this, I was halfway through felting the little beluga. who's ungainly flubbery formless shape was proving to be challenging when every photographic reference gave entirely different lumps and bumps. Its almost as though the "form" just flows about the underlying skeleton.
Finding the "truth of the thing" may have escaped me yet. More than once I thought of Ahab"s vengeful quote "..from hell's dark heart I stab at thee".. I named him "Stubb" after the second mate.
The last little fellow is an Orca or Killer whale, who turned out very nicely. and flowed out of my needle pokings with ease. To complete the trio of Ahabs "mates" he is "Flask" after the third, who was written as being an ever pleasant ever-smiling fellow from Martha's Vineyard.
Its been a struggle here in my tiny village on the eastern coast of Nova Scotia but I'm certain I'm having much more fun than Captain Ahab. My labors have garnered me three new sculptures as a result.
Many moons ago I promised a "how-to" blog... I did photograph this finished blue dinosaur in all of his stages so now its time to try to help us make sense of the process...
They do say "those who cannot do teach"...well it seems I can do but Istruggle to teach, so perhaps the reverse is true too. It may be fruitless to explain the work because it is less a "plan" than simply feeling your way through. Each piece is the epitome of creative process beginning sometimes with out so much as an image in my minds eye.
Beyond the picture above, of the finished work, the next,
Picture #1- Is the balls of fluff and the tools of the trade. Pictured here are both raw "black sheep" wool rovings and a carded ball of mixed white and black. Also is pictured a brush "mat" for felting upon, so one doesn't stab themselves! There is on felting needle and two garden variety chopsticks. Knitting needles or smooth bbq skewers would work as well.
Picture #2 - Shows the usefulness of the two chopsticks for twirling a thin sheet of rovings into a cylinder used for arms and legs and giraffe necks and octopus tentacles. You get the picture! Essentially, the beginnings of each sculpture are a variety of applicable shapes. I assemble parts and pieces and keep them aside for "assembly".
There are different grades of needles for deep heavy work as in the forming of the core or base of the sculpture and regular and finer needles for surface and finish work.
Picture # 3 - His body was a sizable gourd. First I made an egg shape and then a cone atop this made with a with a pile of rovings twirled obviously thicker at one end, his legs toes and arms were pairs of evenly sized cylinders. You put the parts together by deep needling through both pieces with a bit of spare fluff in between. Its all sort of gradual. You get a feel for density, a feel for the directionality of the needle that produces the desired effect. I tackle form first and add color on the surface later with a finer finishing needle.
Picture #4 - Parts that needed to be bent like elbows and knees and the right curve of his neck are done so by holding them bent and deep-needling to keep them that way. I have found they relax a bit so I bend them to the extreme and needle them sturdily. Even in his finished state he could be re-needled and his pose could be changed somewhat.
Pictures #5 and #6 - He sort of evolved as I went along,...18 hours in all, with giant yellow toes, one at a time, with claws. His back grew a set of lovely red scales that I made one at a time then poked in individually. To get him to sit flat, I put him on the needling mat and deep-needled downward while he sat flat, leaning the gourd shape back slightly because by then I pictured him reclining on one big hand while waving or resting the other on his knee. After a bit of poking the fibers just molded to the surface of the mat and settled him into sitting position.
I do remember getting him to a point where everything was built but his head and not knowing how to proceed. I just wrapped a blob of wool around his head and began to poke. I think the best way to learn is to put the materials in your hands and go. You really do develop a feel for it and each project teaches me more about the possibilities. Its important work completely, thoroughly needling on all the surfaces, around each angle and limb to leave a lasting even form.
Even as I write I realize all the little nuances that made him are hard to describe and so fine, (..like his nostrils and his smile...the ridge of his nose...) that they'd be hard to demonstrate. But the finished fella makes me smile, and as always, so satisfying that I just want to do more!
It surely has been a stretch, busy and sometimes lucrative but most accurately, a long, long stretch! I must apologize and confess my embarrassment at being presumptuous enough to say I would craft a figure a day until I'd encompassed the alphabet and then proceed to fail so miserably.
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Life, as they say, had other plans. I have been in the midst of many things. A lovely trip to North Carolina with most of my precious and wonderful family, a brief getaway to Boscawen Inn in Lunenburg with my spouse, prepping Isaac's hundreds of daylilies and the vegetable garden and navigating the shifting and unpredictable quicksand that is planning long term care for an aging parent.
In and around all of that, the small needle felted critters that I so enjoy creating have been selling rather quickly at the Crafter's Room. The growing number of collectors have commissioned some work as well. What suffered in the process was taking time to write my blog and having the presence of mind to photograph the pieces I did complete. The opportunity is lost as they have gone to new homes through the shop. I did capture this teeny sheep, who now resides with his friends big white sheep, big brown booty sheep and my younger brother and his darling wife of 29 years.
Also, here is a tiny chickadee minus his little dirty birdy feet, (..they're coming just as soon as i find a suitable gauge of wire to fashion appropriate tiny ones as the previous felted ones looked way too "Foghorn Leghorn" to be taken seriously.)
The piece for today, this wretchedly foggy May 11th is "M" for Mermaid. I love her. I was asked to create her for one of the lovely folks who buy my pieces. She may have had in mind something larger. This one is, maybe, 10" long if you stretched out her tail. But I won't be upset if I get to keep her!
It was fun to tackle this one as I haven't dealt with flowing hair yet,..or surfaces an thin as her tail. Since they all come out of my funny little brain instead of a pattern book each one is a new "first". Right now , I've just come in from the garden,...as grubby and salty and haggard as you might assume, but at the end of the day this parting silhouette of the tiny sculpture makes me eager to sit and do the next piece...
Stay with me, I will post again as soon as I can!
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