Tag Archives: pig

Milk and Apples

Meet “Milk and Apples”. They are the latest anthropomorphic sculpture to emerge from my work table.

I must admit, they took some time. Not with regard to the actual sculpting time, but more in a manner of conception. I think I experienced something similar to a writer’s block, but not in the area of coming up with ideas, but more the desire to create? Events of the past week or so, don’t exactly inspire light joy-filled work. During this time, I also took a bit of a social media break. The owners of some of the platforms I use decided to dispense with fact checking and decency. So, I decided I didn’t want to consume their products. I’m not sure if I want to go back. In fact, if you want to follow me on social media (minus the ads, bots, and crazies) I did start a BlueSky account. You can check out things I post there at:

@lwartskisculpture.bsky.social

I also add all my sculptures to my Lynn Wartski Art Dolls Pinterest board:

This little social media break also made me reconsider what I do here. I will be honest with you. Maintaining my website as a blog is really just another chore I’ve assigned myself that really doesn’t do much. I have more interaction with the spam bots that manage to evade the filters every time I post or update, than I do with actual readers. I’m still considering options. I will update you if/when I make any decisions on that front.

Back to Milk and Apples

These two rather contented looking porcine characters were inspired by a quote from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples.” For those not familiar, this is an explaination offered to the other farm animals as to why only the pigs would be enjoying those particular goods. This seemed timely to me. So, I felted my dismay into a light hearted wool wrapping. I don’t know if this has made me feel any better, but it did inspire some charming art.

The pigs are needle felted wool over a wire and quilt batting armature. They each have hand sewn iridescent glass bead eyes. Individual elements (pigs, bowl of apples, milk can) are stitched and felted through the top two layers of the base. The base is made of three layers of heavy wool felt: green, brown, and grey (not shown).

I am not sure if Milk and Apples will show up at HGA right away. I may hang on to them for my feature show. That show opens the last week of July.

Holiday Dance?

The Ornament Cha-Cha.

The dance reference is my attempt to describe the activity in my studio during this time of the holiday season. I am in no way complaining that my one-of-a-kind ornaments are popular. I love that visitors to the gallery seem kind of facinated with these little mini-sculptures. But, I do find myself feeling like I am constantly playing catch up. Needless to say, I have not been creating much else. Some of the ornaments even go in to the gallery without me taking the time to photograph them. I did manage to take a few shots since the pop-up event.

anthropomorphic needle felted pig in a blanket holiday ornament . ornament dance — Pig In A Blanket

anthropomorphic needle felted okapi with scarf holiday ornament. holiday dance — Okapi Holidays

anthropomorphic needle felted mouse with cookie holiday ornament. ornament dance — Was This for Santa?

anthropomorphic needle felted mouse w/antlers holiday ornament. ornament dance — Mousedeer

For now, the images will have to speak for themselves. I know this post is a little short, I’m off to dance some more!

Thank you, to all who came out to the Holiday Pop-Up last week. It was a little chilly out in the tent, but the good cheer and great conversations with visitors made it all worthwhile. All of us artist elves have been busy creating. There is still an amazing selection of original art gifts for the holidays and beyond, so stop by the Hillsborough Gallery of Arts if you’re looking for something special.

Cliche?

This little pig is a little cliche, and a little different

“When pigs fly” is a somewhat over used animal idiom. So much so, that when I thought of creating a pig with wings, I almost stopped myself from being cliche. Just today, scrolling through social media I saw another needle felted pig with wings. I had just finished taking photos of my own sculpture, and was glad that there was not much resembelence.

A Little Cliche is a needle felted anthropomorphic pig with wings sculpture — A Little Cliche

My pig is sitting sraight up looking at its viewer. I created a pair of brightly colored butterfly wings instead of birds wings. I think that the fragility of the butterfly wings increases the unlikely nature of flight. It also provides the figure with a more magical fairytale quality.

“A Little Cliche” is needle felted wool over a wire and quilt batting armature with glass bead eyes. The wings of this piece required some experimentation. I started out wet nuno felting the fibers on cheesecloth. I was not as happy with the amount of fiber on the backside of the wings, so I started to work them with needles. This unfortunately broke some of the netting, so I had thread ends sticking out. My solution was to felt that nuno felt to a thin layer of prefelt. This encapsulated the netting (and broken threads) and provided a nice amount of soft coloring on the inside of the wings. I spray starched and pressed the wings to provide a little more stability, and then added them to the pig figure.

An Original

The other small sculpture I completed this week is Singing Shroom. There isn’t much that is cliche about this figure. He is a continuation of my mini pieces, though he is a bit larger than the others. This anthropomorphic fungus is singing a tune. He is needle felted wool over a quilt batting wrapped chopstick segment, and secured to a natural wood base.

Anthropomorphic needle felted singing mushroom sculpture — Singing Shroom

As Promised

Last week I promised to share some ornaments that began life as wool dryer balls. Here are two that I’ve created so far for this year. These ornaments are more like “painting” with the wool fiber on the curved surface of the dryer balls. Each is finished off by stitching and felting a yarn loop on the top.

needle felted holiday ornament with silhouetted moose/lansdcape design — Moose Twilight

needle felted holiday ornament with cardinal bird on branch design — Moose Twilight

Wartski Art Dolls and Sculpture

Art dolls and mixed media sculpture