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Caitlin McCormack's Creepy Crochets


I've been following Caitlin McCormack on Twitter for quite some time now, but I realized that I haven't posted about her awesome work here on my blog. Caitlyn is a Philadelphia-based artist known for her intricate skeleton sculptures of different animals pinned to black backgrounds or encased in glass specimen jars. They're not real skeletons, of course. The 27-year-old University of the Arts graduate crochets them from glue soaked string.

Her grandfather was a skilled bird-carver and her grandmother a talented crocheter. She started making the sculptures as a way to cope the loss of her grandparents, who died within months of each other.

"The act of stiffening intricately crocheted cotton string with glue produces material that is structurally similar to delicate bone tissue,"she says. "The string implemented in this process can be viewed as the basic cellular unit of fabrication, and by utilizing media and practices inherited from my deceased relatives, I aim to generate emblems of my diminishing bloodline, embodied by each organism's skeletal remains."




Caitlin's Mnemosyne is currently on view at Paradigm Gallery + Studio in Philadelphia. The exhibit opened on October 23 and runs through December 12, 2015, so you've got plenty of time to check it out if you happen to be in (or near) the City of Brotherly Love.
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