Saturday, May 15, 2010

Shaped piece - tapestry

One of the pieces I am trying to produce for my course is a shaped piece.  I have decided to try to make a casemoth.  It will not reflect the colours all that accurately, but I have decided that I tend to be too literal and need to loosen up.  So I am going to use colours that appeal to me and play with the texture.

A casemoth was on our door the other day and I accidentally grabbed it when I was shutting the door (a startling event that captured my attention!).  Here is a picture of it on our brick wall.  It is the inspiration for my work.


The first thing is to use card to allow me to hitch on in the shape I want.  It is traditional to weave tapestry sideways, which suits the casemoth piece.

It is turning out harder than I anticipated to weave the first rows and to select the colours I want but hopefully I will get my head around it and not take too long to produce the work. It is about the size of an A4 piece of paper which is much bigger than any casemoth I have ever seen.  I am taking artistic license in a variety or ways.

2 comments:

theregatha said...

Mary I am totally facinated by this "object". Is it a real moth, or is it in the pre moth hybernating state?

Mary said...

theregatha, I think it is a caterpillar-like stage. The pupa lives in the case and the males turn into moths but I am not so sure about the females, I think some of them never metamorphose into moths. I will try to find out some more information and put a link.