CAIRN

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 waymarkers, 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.      

I wanted to use fleece  local to the area as the stones in a cairn would be local to the site. I also wanted the balls to be all the original colour after washing as the white has a strong impact on the viewer. It is a sculpture that can be viewed from all angles and has a very tactile quality due to the material and formation. It  is interesting to see the lack of colour in this piece compared to my other textile and printed artwork.    

This sculpture was on show at ‘The Devonshire Arms Country House Hotel’ at Bolton Abbey to draw attention to fundraising for the mountain rescue team.