Sunday 13 January 2013

Medusa - a felt sculpture

In April 2010 I posted about a new project I had been working on ...
I had joined a fibre group who experimented with all types of creative fibre methods.
We had been given a challenge with a theme of 'Wild Women'
My mind went immediately to Medusa.
To me she was truly wild, exiled to survive on her own haunted by the writhing of a myriad of snakes which were her hair. I could imagine a felted bust of her tortured face
and snakes of all colours and textures slithering about her, so I set myself to work.
Firstly I found some garden wire to build a basic frame
 


 Then covered the frame with chicken wire.
This allowed me to shape her face
 And I covered the soon-to-be snakes with fabric medical tape
to prevent the fibres slipping away from the wire
 Using corriedale fleece I began to needle felt the shoulders and face


 and refined the facial features
then began preparing the snakes


added some colour to the shoulders

 and face
- I like her best like this


added more shape to the shoulders
and began colouring the snakes


The nights were long
It was my intention for the snakes be the feature
with each one created using different fibre techniques


But I was running out of time.
 I had to forget most of the finishing and textures
and present her as she was.
I think she looked wild and tortured enough 

1 comment:

Rubie Magpie said...

Hi, me again! I love, love, love your Medusa bust. She totally reminds me of all the pictures I have seen of her in the greek mythology stories.

I never would a thought of using chicken wire as my base for needle felting either, thank you for sharing that. for my characters, I used old balls of knitting wool.

I think mini magpie would LOVE felted pixie boots. At two and a half she adores dressing up. I might have a go at felting her some.