It's trepidatious taping time again. Should I use more duct tape for the corners of my box, or is 20m of hideously-inorganic, stinky sticky stuff enough to keep my jellyfish from escaping on their trip to New York?
It's always odd letting stuff go. Even worse when you have to de-construct everything you've made so that it fits into the box, desperately trying to make yourself remember how it should be put back together once you're in a foreign gallery.
I managed to get a few snaps before things were dismantled in the hope that it will jog my memory.(Would you believe that I'm taking these with a 5mega pixel Viewty camera phone bought to replace my old camera? Top tip - don't waste your £300-. It has a cavalier approach to focusing!)
There are 16 football jellyfish flocking to the World Financial Centre.
Their silk, bubblewrap, plastic and foam tentacles hold static and wave eerily at you whenever you walk past.
Just to give you an idea of scale, some of the jellyfishes' tentacles drape up to 5ft beneath their bodies.
I've been pouring over Claire Nouvian's book The Deep for inspiration.
Just when I think I'm being a little outlandish in my embellishment, I find that Mother Nature has already been there, done that and is the mistress of frill, pomp and colour clash co-ordination.
Thus, my queen jellyfish, of which there are three, are heavily laden with crocheted mantles and tentacles beneath their glassy bells.
And I didn't hold back with my 80's wedding confection of crocheted balloon ribbon and gift ties.
Or my anemone mounds, of which there are now not just blue, but orange, green, purple and clear versions sprouting across the side of a 2m wide crocheted urchin.
And of course, with the reaction my hula-hoop-woven anemone got in Chicago, I had to try one out for the plastic New York reef. Whilst the yarn anemone was soft, velvety and strangely comforting, this plastic-bag one is cold, hard and unforgiving. Even now its foam 'lips' are finished, it still reminds me of snorkelling in freakishly-cold currents, hanging over dead coral. It's not one of my favourites
.
So all the elements are packed, including 5 blue stars - the two seen here half-finished.
I'll take pictures when everything has been laid out and put in place for the show. So much of my reef's shape will be dictated by the space, its advantages and limitations.
The plastic reef will be in the World Financial Center, in a
beautiful public space called the Winter Garden.
The display
space is a gorgeous, curved, glass-fronted, store-front, about 38 feet long and 10 feet
deep, that looks out onto the Winter
garden. The whole thing will look like a giant aquarium.
All my yarn and fibre creations will join the IFF's main reef, displaying in the New York University's display windows on Broadway.
The windows will be finished for Sunday the 6th April. If you find yourself in New York, come take a look.
I've also finally finished my Gas Station Panel for the International Fibre Collaborative event on the 11th April in Syracuse.
3 feet square and pretty hefty, it is of course, covered in coral! The link it has to oil consumption being that all the yarns and the backing fabric are plastic/oil-derived. It will be interesting to see how they cope with the elements. I'm assuming that they will not degrade in the rain, but whether they keep their colour under bright New York State skies will be another matter.
