Feel felt and felt 25 years 1984-2009
A felt as an artist´s media
SAUNA
In my childhood home we bathed once a week in a seaside sauna, which was dark and black with soot. The only bright spot was a red woolly elf and it was moving... Every sauna-day the woolly elf was waiting in a different place. Because of the elf I took a tolerant attitude toward bathing, just in case Elf might bring luck to the bathers and the bathhouse itself. So it was the guardian spirit of sauna.
Other childhood memories about sauna are the colder-than-cold antechamber, and the washing water: ice-cold water and boiling hot water and trying to find the right water temperature for washing.
As a child I also learned the wool is a good substance and woollen clothes are more valuable than other clothes. Swellings and other slight bruises were cured by pressing with wool. The wool helped cure my grandparents´ aches and pains, and woollen socks gave immediate relief to my own neuralgic (“growing-”) pains. Woolly felt boots were the only proper footwear in subzero weather if you wanted to avoid frozen toes.
As a child I got my first felting experience with wearing woolen mittens and making snowballs. Repeated rubbing with snow made the soft mittens into stiff felt ones.
As an adult I have continued to work with hot and cold waters searching for the best temperature to speed up the felting process.
Wool has become my most beloved material cause its healing and protective power, but also because the working process touches my feminine essence. Felting is an alkaline process. You need alkali in order the wool to felt. Also the fertilization requires the alkali surroundings of the vagina. Felting is like giving birth. It can't be a coincidence that Finnish words EMÄ (mother, dam), EMÄntä (hostess, wife), EMÄtin (vagina) and EMÄs (alkaline) resemble one another.
THE MOTHER FELT AND THE BIRTH OF A NEW FELT
In 1992 I had the honoured and opportunity to teach the forgotten talent of making felt-making in West-Mongolia, Mankhan sum. In return I learned the local nomadic lifestyle and the skill of making large yurt felts drawn by a horse. Since then Mongolia has been for me the Land of Mother Felt (Äitihuovanmaa). Man needs an old "mother felt" to give birth to a new felt. It is the responsinbility of the older women to spread the fresh wool over the mother felt. The supernatural abilities of nomad women are ensuring successful birth of the new felt. All families of the yurt village and all ages from small kids to grandparents take part in the felting process.
On the slopes of the Altai mountain I comprehended and found a familiar feminine Mongolian word: EME. The meaning of eme is feminine, wife, midwife, medicine and herb. The vegetation on the mountain slopes was low and prickly; the air was a mixture of scents of strong herbs. You could see small wool flocks caught in thorns around. For sure in early days the loose wool flocks from wild sheep were gathered to be used as padding for the sleeping place. Of course The first felt was born with making love!
THE MAGIC OF SHEEP – FELT AS SACRED SIGNIFICATION
My experience is that only the wool from a live sheep felts. Felt is the oldest ennobled substance and the “second skin” of the man. It is living substance giving spirit and life to all art representations. Just as a tattooed skin is alive (also ancient nomadic art), felted wool is alive. Both serve to bring together man, spirit, nature and journey. The felting process itself is part dance, part trance.
Domestic sheep were not treated as totem animals, but they are very valuable. Their wild ancestors are described in ancient Mongolian felt a lot; a wild sheep is one of the most frequently represented animal figure. Sheep is also the most eaten animal in various rituals. The appreciation of the sheep is high also still in the present Mongolia: out of ten matters which the Mongolians regarded as most important, sheep is the first and surely not because of its nutritive value. From the living wool that is walking along, man gets materials for sheds, yurt and clothing, art and ritual. At the same time the sheep carries in his back a living story and knowledge of the days of ancestors.
Wool for me is a living agent with its own memory and physics. Felting works as a receiver, a navel cord, between knowledge, thoughts and feelings and the surrounding world, between the present and the past. My work with felt is a research about connection and knowledge between natural science, mythology and a living metaphysics.
Tuula Nikulainen 1992 Mongolia/2009 Norway:
