Beija

My name is Beija and I use she/her pronouns. I decided to do this art piece because I love to felt and in 6th grade, I was in the Utopia Village intensive, where we used the same type of clay that I used for the polymer clay version of my character.

Outside of class, I often felt smaller things like Alfred, the little green dino. I hope Alfred encourages you to see the joy in little things and maybe even inspires you to start felting yourself.

My larger creation took much more time. I tried to have them look as similar as possible, though color created a bit of an issue in that sense. There are also similarities that aren’t immediately apparent, like how both the felt and clay versions have wire in their tails to help with balance. To help make them look similar, I had the clay one next to me while I felted. This way, I could reference it when I wasn’t sure exactly where one of the flowers went, for example. One challenge when creating the clay version was having the front legs be strong enough to support the rest of the body. I fixed this by adding wire into them. There is also wire in the front legs of the felted one, though this wire is for the purpose of allowing it to have a wider range of poses, not stability.

I love trying new mediums, and though neither of these were entirely new, I still got to experiment and try new techniques. Art is one of my favorite subjects, and I’m always excited to start a new art project. One of the things I love about art is how there are so many types of art, from collage to sculptures. Some of my favorite kinds of art are digital art and watercolors. While I didn’t do either of those for my art project, I still like working on art outside of school. This project has been one of my favorite in-class assignments at SGS, and I’m pretty proud of how it turned out.

Creatures, 2024

Wool, wire, and clay