Interview with Artist Amy Long
If I make something and I want more of it I just try to make it roughly the same.
Amy Long
Artist’s page at five15 gallery in Phoenix
Pictured above (left to right): Double wranger, Strap Dandy Wrangler, and Crop Style Wrangler
Bottom left: Terissue
Recently I had a chance to talk with Amy Long, a fibers artist local to me in Tempe, Arizona. Is it hard to keep making work when it’s over 100 degrees outside?
Amy: I can always crochet. I am interested in things being roughly the same but not identical — maybe it has something to do with the idea that everything is part of a system but each thing has something different and special to offer. I keep my eyes peeled at thrift stores but it is hard to find wool yarn — it is usually acrylic which does not felt. I don’t even know how. Now, I suppose felt-making is more of a winter-time sport. I may work a little slower if I am exhausted from the heat. She makes handmade felt hats. I just order the natural cream color fleece, then I felt it, and then I dye it.
Becky: Where did you learn to crochet? Learning felt making from her really helped me fine tune my felt.
Becky: Where do you get your materials? The regular professor, Mark Newport, was on sabbatical that semester so a fiber artist from Tucson named Valerie Constantino filled in. Mark knits rather than crochets, so if he had been teaching the class, I may have never learned crochet! I tried to teach myself how to felt and made a couple of sheets but I really “learned” it when I was shadowing Mark Newport in a beginning fibers class. I learned how to knit when I was a child and always struggled with it — but crocheting came to me very quickly. Is it hard to find fibers locally?
Amy: I generally buy yarn from Fiber Factory in Mesa, AZ — they offer a student discount so I stocked up before I graduated. Fiber Factory sells already dyed roving but pre-dyed stuff can be spendy. I sat in, and participated in the beginning fiber class to gain teaching experience. After learning and falling in love with felt making, I went to a workshop taught by Jean Hicks. They sell fleece for felt making there too, but I need so much that I order big 22+ pound balls of fleece from R. If things don’t go the way I want, I just pull out stitches and re-attempt them. I dive in and if need be, fix it later.
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I am a very intuitive worker. I often make sketches and decide on what size I want the piece before hand. Who taught you how to felt?
Amy: I learned how to crochet in fall 2005 in a three-dimensional fibers class at ASU. I also have been fortunate in that people give me their old fleece and yarns.
Becky: You live near Phoenix, Arizona. Now, when I am hand-felting, like when I was making felt picture frames, I kept track of my measurements so when the felt shrank it was the correct size but even that was not terribly accurate. My first sample/practice piece turned into a chicken. The creepy thing is that I don’t leave the house much — I just sit inside and crochet. It is quite physical and it not fun at all when one is really warm.
Becky: Once you create a shape you like, how to you keep track of it for making more?
Amy: I do not write patterns or follow them. Lindsay. She creates very intriguing work and I’m very excited to share with you all her words on her inspirations and processes!
Then I just try to make it match up to what is in my head. H.
Original post by Becky Stern
