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    Anatomy and Ancient Sea Creatures Converge in Hiné Mizushima’s Felt Sculptures

    Group of anatomical felt brooches. All images courtesy of Hiné Mizushima, shared with permission

    Anatomy and Ancient Sea Creatures Converge in Hiné Mizushima’s Felt Sculptures

    July 22, 2025

    ArtCraftNature

    Kate Mothes

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    From the spiral shells of prehistoric ammonites to uncanny depictions of organs and fish, Hiné Mizushima has a knack for combining cuteness and humor with the unusual and unseen. The Vancouver-based artist (previously) continues to create vibrant dioramas and wall sculptures that toy with textiles, anatomy, and taxidermy.

    Using felt, sequins, embroidery thread, and yarn, Mizushima builds colorful displays of coral, animals, and botanicals. A mounted moray eel, for example, mimics a natural history display, showing a cutaway of its belly revealing a—rather lively—baby eel.

    “Squids”

    Recently, the artist also sewed a series of brooches in the form of microscopic organisms like Daphnia and Paramecium and anatomical human organs. Nerves and blood vessels extend along the root and crown of a tooth, complete with a filled cavity.

    Mizushima is currently preparing for a group show at Ranbu Gallery in Osaka this fall, plus another group exhibition at Beinart Gallery in Melbourne in early 2026. The artist looks forward to experimenting with some new craft techniques and focusing on her Etsy shop, where original pieces and prints are available for purchase. Explore more on her website, Instagram, and Behance.

    Anatomical felt brooch

    “Anatomical Moray Eel”

    Detail of “Anatomical Moray Eel”

    “Phantom Squid”

    “Ammonite”

    Anatomical felt brooch

    “Turtleback Twin Beasts”

    Anatomical felt brooch

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    Figurative Wool Sculptures by Nastassja Swift Explore the Memories and Narratives of Blackness

    
    Art

    #felt
    #fiber art
    #sculpture
    #self-portrait
    #wool

    April 13, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    Detail of “Passage, when momma lets my braids flow down my back,” wool, synthetic braiding hair, wood, plaster, resin, satin. Collaborators are Kiki Jewell, Nyja Amos, Grace Jewell. Photo by David Hunter-Hale. All images © Nastassja Swift, shared with permission
    In her salient text, In The Wake: On Blackness and Being, scholar Christina Sharpe delves into the multiple definitions of “wake,” which span from “the path behind a ship, keeping watch with the dead, (to) coming to consciousness.” “In the wake,” Sharpe writes, “the past that is not past reappears, always, to rupture the present.” Largely focused on conversations around anti-Blackness and continued violence, the book is rooted in the afterlife of slavery and what sentiments, practices, and memories linger into the current moment, questions that similarly ground the work of artist Nastassja Swift.
    Through fiber-based figures often arranged in larger gatherings, Swift explores various narratives tied to Blackness, particularly those that relate to water and ancestral presences. “I’m interested in taking those things as starting points and imaging a space or happening that involves my sculpture and allows me to think through a hypothetical rooted in that memory or history,” the Virginia-based artist says. She derives these stories from texts like Sharpe’s, discussions with friends, and in one instance, a conversation with an older Black woman at a Toni Morrison film screening.

    “Freedom Whispers in the Sky,” wool and wire
    While there are multiple narrative threads in each of her pieces, Swift doesn’t strive to disclose each one, preferring explicit gaps in the connections. “I love knowing that there’s more to what’s being made and imagining other characters or continued happenings around what’s being made,” she says. “That’s not something I’m attempting to convey, rather information that I’m okay not sharing.”
    Many of the faces evoke imagined subjects, not relatives Swift has met or seen in photographs, but rather somewhat of “an ancestral presence that allows my hands to make the face in any particular moment without my mind being aware of it.” She always begins with the supple shape of the face and then sculpts the facial details and hair from dyed wool and felt, a process that’s intimate and that’s evolved with two more recent works.

    “Your Banks are Red Honey Where the Moon Wanders-Self Portrait,” wool, cocoa butter soap, black sand, resin on wood. Photo by David Hunter-Hale
    “With ‘Passage, when momma lets my braids flow down my back’ (2021) and ‘Your Banks are Red Honey Where the Moon Wanders-Self Portrait’ (2020), everything changed,” Swift says, describing the shift in the process to that of a ritual. The first of these two works, “Passage,” is a bubblegum pink figure sporting a collar marked with smaller heads arranged in a gradient. Long braids descend down the torso and pool on the floor. Second is Swift’s self-portrait, which features a calm face shaped in deep red wool that’s silhouetted by braids and figurative tendrils. Both interpret specific subjects as West African masks and sculptural forms in order to question “what it means to worship someone, and how that word could be reshaped to allow us to honor those around us,” the artist says.
    Swift will have a satellite exhibition titled Canaan: when I read your letter, I feel your voice at the Contemporary Arts Network in Newport News from June 5 to July 3, 2021. Thanks to the Art as Activism Grant from the Black Box Press Foundation, the pieces will then travel for a stay at the Galveston Arts Center. The artist sells some felted dolls and other goods in her shop, and head to Instagram for glimpses into her studio and a larger collection of her sculptures.

    “A Party for Sojourner,” wool, natural dyes, and tulle. Photo by Marlon Turner
    Passage, when momma lets my braids flow down my back,” wool, synthetic braiding hair, wood, plaster, resin, satin. Collaborators are Kiki Jewell, Nyja Amos, Grace Jewell. Photo by David Hunter-Hale
    “Inner City,” indigo-dyed wool and felt fabric. Photo by David Hunter-Hale
    “Concealer,” wool and wire
    Swift working on “Passage, when momma lets my braids flow down my back.” Photo by Nalan Smart

    #felt
    #fiber art
    #sculpture
    #self-portrait
    #wool

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    A Monumental Collection of Slouching Figures Considers the Effects of Aging on the Body

    
    Art

    #aging
    #body
    #felt
    #sculpture
    #thread

    February 1, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    All images courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Art
    Nicole Havekost describes her towering figures as exhibiting the contradiction of “sublime embarrassment… Bodies are magical and glorious and gross and bewildering. Bodies are civilized and feral.” Through hand-sewn sculptures, the Rochester-based artist explores the ways aging affects peoples’ figures and the emotional process of adjusting to a new reality.
    She stitches large anthropomorphic works from industrial felt, shaping bodies that are bulging and covered with knots and uneven seams that serve as a reminder of restoration. Havekost explains:
    These are the visible representations of the making and mending, repairing and refinishing, we are engaged in as human beings on a daily basis. It shows where we have been and marks where we are going. My figures show their imperfect repairs outwardly, unlike most of us who put on our best public faces. As I have aged, I have become more of a partner to my body. To have a body and accept its imperfections is a privilege and that is what I continue to explore in my work.
    Coupled with the varying stitches are the figures’ loping movements and gestures: they lean against the wall, slouch on the floor, and stretch stiff limbs, exposing their “lived-in bodies. They are soft but hold their shape and are in poses open to nurturing and comfort though they have already given so much. They are protectors that need protection,” the artist says.
    Although much of Havekost’s work centers on smaller creatures, this collection is monumental in scale and a natural progression from the doll-sized pieces she’s made previously. The nondescript works loom within the 18-foot gallery at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where they’re currently on view through June 26, 2021. “The idea of these figures really owning the space, of the audience having to adjust to their size and presence is what really drove the increased scale and bulk of the pieces. I owed it to the figures to let them be as big as they needed to be,” she says.
    Explore Havekost’s larger body of work on her site, and follow her latest projects on Instagram.

    #aging
    #body
    #felt
    #sculpture
    #thread

    Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member and support independent arts publishing. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about contemporary art, help support our interview series, gain access to partner discounts, and much more. Join now!

     
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