A Soft Bear

My first Bear Work was a trial in stitched tapestry. It's a very simple and direct way to translate a line drawing, and even at such an early stage of making, the object has a very ordered, and neat appearance,

My thoughts on how this tapestry will become an artwork centre on the composition of imagery. The interplay of the bear icon on the flat, stitched surface.

The second Bear Work takes the same line drawings, adjusted for scale or reversed for the sake of the composition.
A relationship between the order of a clear line drawing and a more chaotic and random way of 'filling in' the Icon is developed in this piece. By choosing to place pieces of coloured woolen material on the back of the drawing, relying on the shadow of the drawing through the fabric, in order to define the image, and not sticking strictly to the edges of the drawing, the clarity of the image starts to
disintegrate.

Each little Icon was dealt with individually, sometimes a satisfying selection of colours was taken from my scraps bin, sometimes the scraps were chosen purely by size or shape, or as a random handful. Also, varying degrees of adherence was made to the physical structure of the bear's physique, resulting in some of the bears being little more than wierd blobs.

The Bear Wrap is in it's structure designed to be a comforting 'hug' of a garment. The imaginary hug from an imaginary bear or the hug of your own teddy bear is a sensation that sets one up for contemplating the contradictions inherent in our use and abuse of the natural world, and our problematic insistence on being the 'centre' of the earth's reason for existence.
Further to the 'hug' of these problematic thoughts is the exposed nature of the backs of the bear appliques. The 'back', the messy, stitchy side also has the ghost of the original, ordered, clear line drawing of the bear Icon. Which is the front, the outside of the Bear Wrap?