Borrowing from the world of taxidermy, Shauna Richardson crochets wool animals that are not your children’s stuffed animals. Richardson stuffs each life-sized animal and completes the sculptures with claws, jaws and glass eyes.
“In an attempt to remove the pieces from the realms of soft and cuddly, I use coarse wool such as mohair mixes, reproduction claws, jaws and glass eyes. My crochet technique is freestyle, one color, one stitch – the direction of the stitches highlighting anatomical features. All of the animals I make are life-size.” From Richardson’s interview on Dazed Digital
What began as an exploration of the theory that ‘anything can be art’ has turned into a full time, worldwide, event-making job. For the last two years she has been working on the Lionheart Project, the largest crochet sculpture in the world. Richardson is sculpting three 25 foot lions from polystyrene, setting them in steel skeletons and crocheting their ‘skin’. The project is her contribution to showcase crochet as a valid medium – her hope is to inspire a new generation of artists to utilize this ancient craft.
Shauna Richardson: Crochetdermy from Nick Hand on Vimeo.
Shauna Richardson’s website
Watch Richardson in action in this video
More about her Lionheart project here
Interview on Dazed Digital
I was so lucky to see this work for myself in London at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s exhibition Power of Making.
Shauna Richardson is a favourite of mine and my friends.