Part of a series of posts about a residency at Hlaðan in Iceland.
I tried piecing together a little temple inspired by the church on the outskirts of Vogar. This was made from a thin sheet of felt that I cut and sewed.
The tiny temple was strung up between a pair of bushes on the front lawn of my little apartment. In Iceland, there are roving work crews composed of school kids, not in class for the summer. They wear bright day glow reflector vests and typically do jobs like sweeping sidewalks, weeding, planting down sod and mowing lawns. Much of the time they are chatting in packs, and innovating new ways of working while laying down on the ground.
I awoke one sunny morning to find that the the temple was scrambled back into bits of wool by the mowers and thought that it was hilarious. We all take different things seriously.
Part of a series of posts about a residency at Hlaðan in Iceland.
In designing the poster to accompany the exhibition and performance that Kristin and I put together, we took a trip to Frida Franka, an incredible antique shop in Reykjavik. There were piles and mazes of old collections, as though whole kitchens, workshops, and apothecaries were poured into a single house and piled on top of one another. I was amazed by the packaging on a set of old products, especially a letter pressed glassine package of cloves that were still rich and pungent after decades of storage. I took a set of photographs that I pulled elements from in the poster design.
We spent an afternoon in Kaffismiðan (praise their lattes!) and I drew up this poster with Kristin’s help on the spelling and layout. I love the letter ð!
We were blessed to be able to work in the studio of a friend and crank out a series of silk screened posters onto sheets of old weathered newsprint.
I got such a kick out of seeing these posters up around Reykjavik, and outside the barn in Vogar. The wind had been whipping for the days leading up to the opening and swirled the grasses into beautiful patterns.
Part of a series of posts about a residency at Hlaðan in Iceland.
These videos informed a lot of my process and got me excited about felt and the potential for building with it. Dig that embroidery at the end of the second video!
Part of a series of posts about a residency at Hlaðan in Iceland.
Kristin and I visited the spinning and dyeing mill of Istex to source all the wool that I am using for this installation. I was totally mesmerized by all the equipment, the machinery that was spinning and rolling and folding. The contrast between the scale of this place and the hand spinning and carding that I have experience with was dizzying.
I brought home three bags of unspun wool, which filled the car with a rich smell of sheep. It was like having a clean animal in the back seat.
I spread a pile of wool evenly onto a sheet and hosed the whole thing down with water and soap. I rolled the whole thing up into a tight column and agitated it by rolling it along my forearms, from fingers to elbows, pushing down into the ground. After about 15 minutes, the wool was totally bound together into a soft sopping sheet. From there I could lift the whole piece gently and drop it back to the ground. I repeated this for another five minutes. Each time I lifted the felt, I brought it a little higher, and threw it down with a little more force. With each toss, the sheet would became more tightly intertwined and shrink just a bit, until the fibers became so locked together that I was throwing it down with as much strength as I had.
I then rinsed the sheets and hung them out on my line to dry.
As I began to gather these sheets, I laid them into a pile that was eventually as thick as a mattress. On rainy days, I laid on it and read the Laxdœla saga and experimented with embroidery and cutting shapes and costume from the felt.
With wool from Istex, a company that represents hundreds of Icelandic shepherds, I’ve been creating sheets of felt to use as panels for construction of a temple. Each piece of felt is made from spreading out wool rovings (cleaned, carded fibers) onto a large sheet, then wetting and soaping the pile. Once I’ve tightly rolled up the sheet, I spend about twenty minutes rolling it with pressure from my hands and forearms until the long staple fibers cling to eachother in a mat. After lifting and tossing each sheet against the floor for another five minutes, the fibers become tightly intertwined and I hang the sheets out to dry.
is a designer living in Los Angeles, California. He is currently working with textiles : growing, dyeing, weaving, sewing and building pieces from materials found in and around wherever he finds himself in the world.
