By Katherine Duke ’05 Fiber Arts U Kiyoshi Mino ’01 is constantly surrounded by animals. When not tending to the live ducks, chickens, bees, pigs, sheep and steers on the 10-acre farm that he founded with his wife, Emma Lincoln ’02, he’s sculpting birds and mammals out of wool through a technique called needle felting.
Mino starts with a clump of wool that is somewhat like a large cotton ball. Every time he pokes a specialized needle into it, small notches on the needle hook onto microscopic scales on the fiber and push the wool inward, making the clump smaller and tighter at a particular point. Through 10 to 30 hours of strategic prodding, Mino incorporates multiple colors and textures of wool, as well as flexible wire, until a creature emerges: A goldfinch grips a branch with its talons, wings lifted as though about to take flight. A miniature three-toed sloth dangles by its long limbs. The Dramatic Prairie
Amherst Creates
Hooked Courtesy Kiyoshi Mino ’01 (6)
arts news and reviews
Kiyoshi Mino ’01 turns clumps of wool into animal sculptures that “blow taxidermy away.”
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7/29/13 11:38 AM