Marcia Lee Hartnell
"Whiskers – The Real Thing"
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| (Photos by Patrick Fraser) |
Resistance - my first reaction to the project theme. Although I’ve appreciated masks in many forms and seen them in museums, I had no motivation to explore masks as an art form or make one. It was during a lecture on “Micro Macramé” that I found inspiration and the ‘aha’ moment in one of the slides. The slide looked like a lion head and was made of jute. Drawing on my exploration of macramé many years ago, I decided to make a mask using macramé. It would be cat themed.
Now the question, how? In my collection of old macramé cord and jute, and many books and magazines from the 70’s and 80‘s I found many patterns using heavy cord and jute. After a few trials and additional searches I found some new cord that would provide the scale I needed.
“Whiskers” is an original design created for the mask project. There is no hidden meaning or philosophy behind the work. It is just an exploration in macramé. The whiskers are real -- collected over the years as they were shed from various cats I’ve had in my life.