• TITLE: FiberFish
• ARTIST: Cheri Hutchins
• EXHIBIT HISTORY: Bethel Fair, 2004: Grand Prize Arts and Crafts Division: Best In Show
• RELEVANT INFORMATION: The Bethel Art Guild sponsors a 'Steel Salmon' design challenge every year. Each artist who volunteers to participate, designs and decorates the steel salmon 'blank' provided by the Guild, for auction at the Gala in early fall.
• DESCRIPTION: I entered the challenge late, and had only three weeks to design my salmon. I had to use materials I had on hand, and what I could obtain in Bethel. I wanted to showcase my love for fiber, so began by trying to felt commercially prepared merino roving over the entire two-foot long steel (not stainless) fish, i.e. it rusts! After working hours and hours and hours and having only limited success with felting, I abandoned this, cleaned off the rust using vinegar and moved to Plan B. I single crocheted two chains and 'laddered' the two chains together such that the perimeter of the fish was covered. Now I could plain weave a base covering for the fish, which I did out of red single-ply Brown Sheep wool, so the entire fish was covered, not just the front. In order to enhance the rather two-dimensionality of the fish, I "stuffed" roving between part of the woven covering and the steel blank, and strung multicolored triangle beads and tacked them onto the outside of the fish to represent fish eggs. Along the flank, I used a dense surface covering of different colored roving, using rya technique. By cutting the ends short, I got a fuzzy wooly effect for the flank of the fish. The spark for this idea was to emulate the rather rotten and ratty appearance familiar to those of us who see spawning salmon. I put twisted fringe, a bead at each end, to hang over the 'rotted' area on the flank of the fish. Fiber art should be seen and touched! So it gives the viewer something to play with. I felted multicolored merino into a ball, then cut it to make the eye. I further embellished the fish with assorted other bits of fiber and stuff, from roving, felted wool, netting, silk, more, different beads, and buttons, and the little flower for the mouth (seems romantic). I finished by crocheting around the entire fish with black and red single-ply Brown Sheep wool, to give a 'fin' appearance. I, and who knows, maybe there will be a whole school of fiberfish swimming around someday! Started with only the idea that I wanted to use fiber, but didn’t have a firm vision of the end result. It was extremely fun just letting the ideas pop into my head and then try to figure out how to get there. And actually, it was hard to stop doing stuff…..I think that surface design must be pretty addicting! I am eager to explore more artistic ways to use fiber!

Thanks Cheri for sharing your project on the Alaskan Fiber Arts web site!