I’ve had the good fortune to see and photograph some of the felted wool sculptures done by the Colorado artist Heather Aquarius. I thought this one was especially striking. It’s a felted wool sculpture of a “cave art horse”.
A felted-wool horse sculpture by Heather Aquarius. The horse sculpture was inspired by cave paintings from the Lascaux Cave, and the background of this photograph is a print of a paleolithic painting from the Chauvet Cave.
Wool felted Cave Horse sculpture, in a Colorado morning sunrise. Sculpture by the artist Heather Aquarius.
She says that this particular horse was inspired by a one of the paleolithic paintings found on the walls of France’s Lascaux Cave. It’s “Horse 45” in Mario Ruspoli’s book The Cave of Lascaux - The Final Photographs.
Another photograph of Heather Aquarius’ felted wool ‘Cave Pony’ sculpture in the backyard at sunrise. It’s on a sandstone ledge, with sagebrush in the background.
My mind gets a little tangled thinking about the history of the ideas behind this sculpture. The Paleolithic artists were able to transfer the movement, the life, of the horses onto the rock of a cave wall. They took their visions of the animals from out of the sun and down into darkness, to be viewed by the light of flickering lamps. Transducing their thoughts about the living creatures of bone, flesh and fiber into pigment and rock.
Tens of thousands of years later, photographs of the cave art transferred the paleolithic artists’ visions to us, modern “us”. Lights, cameras, lenses, film, then ink on paper. Transducing pigment and rock into ink and paper.
Heather took hair and wool fibers, fashioned those into a creation inspired by the paleolithic artists’ vision, as seen through the photographs. She posed the sculpture in front of a print of Paleolithic wall art from yet a different cave - the Chauvet Cave. Transducing the art again, from print, back to wool and fiber.
There are so many full circles there.
Sources
_Ruspoli, Mario. 1987. The Cave of Lascaux: The Final Photographs. Harry N. Abrams; Reissue edition (May 1, 1987). 206 pages. ISBN 0810912678.
_Sarafina Fiber Art, Inc. Heather gets her felting supplies and tutorials from Sarafina Fiber Art, www.sarafinafiberart.com. Tutorials, kits, supplies…great place if you’re into fiber arts.