Crochet Week: (Thursday) Carol Hummel + Outi Martikainen

I won't be participating in My Creative Space today... it's been a week of administrivia and I really don't have much to show for my labours I'm afraid... some weeks are like that :| 

Instead, I have two very talented people to showcase – both of whom are artists with a thing for decorating trees with crochet...

Just about everyone has heard of Carol Hummel. Her sculptural public art is her own vividly eye-catching telegraph which fuels her fame. She calls them Tree Cozies to highlight the soft encasing of a solid object. In fact, her work is all about dichotomies – the masculine and the feminine, surface and substance, concealment and protection. All culminate to connote the message that "things are not always as they appear to be and making choices independently of external determining forces is essential to living". Love a good message with a bit of crochet!

Outi Martikainen is a Finnish textile artist who also works with crochet. Again, her work is sculptural, but Outi is more interested in the design process; how forms take shape in space. That is, the most important thing for her is not the finished product but how she got there. She says that when crocheting her pieces she thinks about her grandmother and how she + her friends used to crochet blankets by sewing all their smaller pieces together. It's such a beautiful idea and gives hope that skills are not being lost around the world, don't you think? I found her via here.