Beauty is in the eye!

Gill Quinnell

@InspiredByGilly

Course: Foundation Art and Design

Progression: Fine Art Painting and Drawing, Northampton University

Final Marked Project (FMP): Choose your theme. The artist chose ‘Beauty is in the eye.’

“I researched different directions, such as ‘beer goggles’, the nursery rhyme, ‘Jack Spratt’, and artist Julian Opie.”

Due to the Coronavirus lockdown, I couldn’t continue my studies, as I had to home-school my three children. I completed some media experiments during art classes, and ensured I threw an eye in there somewhere!

Whilst researching the ‘evil eye’, I came across crocheted eyes. During home-schooling, I was able to take up my crochet skills, as I could pick it up and put it down at will, and chose this as the technique for my FMP.

I looked back at my pre-lockdown work and chose a drawing of my daughter’s eye as the basis.

Placing a grid over the drawing, I identified the main lines that as the essence of her eye. Removing the shading left a pixelated image that became the pattern.

Half-way through the project, I ran out of wool, and had to wait five weeks for more to be delivered from Turkey - in the lockdown this was a mission in itself!”

Crochet nerd facts:

• Two months in the making

• 213cm by 120cm,about 7feet by 4feet

• 307 columns x 91 rows

• 15 balls of IceYarns, Alara, Navy

• 750g, or 1.7lbs

• 2,100m of yarn

• 4mm hook

• Double crochet, with single crochet border

• 27,941 stitches!

Gill also has work on display in the Graduate Showcase 2020, switch to our events tab to view it in the virtual gallery https://artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/en/node/1423278