Wild Threads: Making Soft Sculpture Patterns

press release: June 4 6:30-8:30pm

Ages: 15+

Register HERE, maximum 12 participants

Bring an object made of a hard material that you’d like translate into a soft sculpture. It could be a fork, a stone, a radio, a carrot...almost anything will work. We’ll start class by looking at a few soft sculptures and the patterns used to make them, as well as some artists that use soft sculpture in their work. Then we’ll use a variety of techniques to make the patterns-tracing, drawing, simplifying shapes, using a copy machine. Bring a sketchbook and an open mind!

Hannah O'Hare Bennett grew up on a small organic farm in Kansas, where she was in constant contact with the textures of the natural world.  After studying printmaking in college, she returned to farming as a career.  Eventually she realized that she approached the work as if it were a personal art project, an ultimately inefficient way to grow food.  As a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador, she learned how to knit and saw beautiful weavings made by local people, and a seed of what would become her career in fiber based arts was planted.  Then, as a graduate student, she encountered hand paper making, an art form that holds infinite possibilities.   Ultimately, her work emerges from the tactile and obsessive labor of farming, and the patterns and textures of the midwestern landscape.  She exhibits work around the country, teaches workshops, and takes on custom dye, quilting and paper projects, as well as working part time as a substitute in Dane county public schools. 

ABOUT THE RESIDENCY: Domesticated: A Fiber Arts Studio inspired by a Wild World  Bigger, brighter, softer, piebald, cuter, tamer, sweeter, less spiny, more compact: these are some of the characteristics that plants and animals develop as they become domesticated by human beings. Think of the difference between your pet dog and a wolf. During this residency, we will create works of art inspired by nature and domesticated nature. Objects will expand or shrink, grow harder or softer, explode outward or bind shut, become evenly patterned or patchy, spikier or smoother or more noticeable or more camouflaged. A book will go feral, extending longer and longer over two months. Sewing pins will sprout strange vegetation and disperse across the walls, spreading like milkweed. We will make paper from plant material and old rags, learn embroidery patterns and then let them go wild, and much more.

The root word of domestication is domus, which means home or hearth.  This studio will reflect my own home, and I hope that visitors will be able to feel at home themselves. Make a cup of tea, bring a book or a project and nestle in for the afternoon. Additionally, this residency will emphasize reusing and recycling materials, but also conscious decision making around when new materials are the best choice.