I started this piece after having had a few very emotional days. With no room in my head to think I just started working with my hands. Definitely ending up with something different than I would normally make: a lot less empty space, a lot more colour and triangled shapes that I normally avoid. I’m not sure if I like the end result, but that’s okay for now - I’ll revisit this one in a few months time and see how I’ll feel about it then.

After the last post I wrote, that received such lovely comments (thank you all!), you might think that everything is Tulips and Roses in my life - but it's not. The overall development is definitely up, up, and up, and I've been blessed with a life that has stayed incredibly stable and peaceful despite the Pandemic that leaves many people stressed out and vulnerable to economic and/or health consequences.

But within my closest family one member has now been diagnosed with two tumors. They'll have to be removed in the next few months, and although the outlooks are generally good, there are still some insecurities that make it definitely so that we'll have to hope for good outcomes and skill-full doctors.

In respect of the non-attention-seeking nature of this very dear family member of mine I'm not going to 'out' this person, but for the past few weeks almost nothing else has been on my mind - and probably for a while nothing else will be.

Which is where the art starts

Always when I worry about a close family member I try to push my mind off of things and start creating. A few years ago my grandfather was at the end of his dementia which left him unrecognizable to me and so so very vulnerable. It made me so so sad to see a smart, capable man sort of dissolve like that - I just had to walk around and took my camera with me. I made many pictures of 'plants between bricks in the city', tiny signs of life in an unhospitable environment. I never developed or published these series but the meditative state I was in made me find at least 30 tiny 'survivors'.

I only understood later what I had done by creating those pictures, and it still might take a while to understand what the above piece means. But it was the thing that my hands were making while my mind was searching for that special quiet place.

Materials

Since I've been doing a course on how to felt paper with just water and hand muscles, I had a few pieces of 'Joomchi', which is paper that almost feels like leather after you create one thick sheet from 2-3 thinner ones. Joomchi was once used to create clothing from (when Korea temporarily didn't have access to textiles) but has seen a revival when one artist saw its potential for creating visual pieces through the process.

You can see the Joomchi on the top half of my piece: it's in Zig-Zag shape from left to red and is very very red.

• In between I have unworked pieces of Mulberry paper, which is great for this type of Fiber art, cut in triangles and basically filling the empty space of the red Zig-Zag pattern.
• There's some brown and orange and pink fibers - which is just 'Silk Noil', a material you get after degumming pure silk thread from cocoons.
• Black lines are wool that's already partly felted with needles, and some yarns that a friend of mine made from reused Sari Silk fibers.

I realize I could probably write a post about each and every 'material' I just mentioned above - each type of material I use has a very special method or production and often centuries of cultural heritage behind them that deserve attention.

But for now I just want to explain shortly what I do with them.

I lay out strands of wool that's not yarn, but true whisps of wool that's only been combed (and dyed) after it was cut from the sheep. These strands of wool have to be layed out perpendicular to each other, so they can form a new fabric after felting. When I lay out several layers of wool (from left to right, and another from top to bottom), I put on the Joomchi, Mulberry papers, Silk Noil, prefelted wool, and everything else I need or want.

I then literally spray water on top of it all. I add soap through a net that is on top of the piece and start rubbing the whole piece with my hands. The friction of my hands with the materials plus the fact that the fibers are (thourougly wet) and soapy makes it so that the wool starts 'grabbing' all the materials that are not wool and each other.

If you work this way long enough (yes, this is a great workout!) all items will 'felt', which means, being hold by wool fibers, and form a strong and even waterproof/-resistant surface.

It's a very difficult process to document as your hands are constantly wet and soapy - not ideal for camera holding. But who knows, maybe I'll video it someday, until then you'll have to find hints on my Instagram page or check out youtube :-)

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Anyway, I decided to write this post as I wanted to share a bit about this piece and its process and introduce myself to the Alien Art Hive. I'm a bit of an unfocussed artist that does photography, digital edits, work like the above (felting mainly, but expanding towards other fiber arts), and lately I've been using pictures of my works in progress that I find visually pleasing to create derived digital art pieces.

I have a lot to share and so little time :-) But I'm trying. Ask me any questions and I'll answer them!

Cheers, an Alien Artist,
Rosa