Caitlin McCormack Crochets Delicate Skeleton Sculptures Using Threads Stiffened With Glue

Caitlin McCormack, got into using textiles in her sculpting as a means of dealing with her own grief and generational trauma. The Philadelphia-based artist creates these crochet sculptures using cotton string, glue and found objects. She fastidiously amalgamates these objects to create delicate skeleton specimens of animals and other figures. 

#1 Let’s Get Demonized Instructional Polyhedron

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#2 Your Time For Being Loved Will End

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Speaking to DeMilked about how she got into this particular art form McCormack said, “I think initially I pursued this modality because it was rooted in so many familiar things, like textiles, the home – very immersive, textural parts of life. Crocheting is also very engaging and bodily as a practice and, combined with overcoming grief, it felt like a very natural activity to gravitate towards. It provided me with a way to transmute my various traumas into something that felt useful, at least emotionally. The work I make now has evolved from being a safety zone, which I can retreat to, towards more of a terrifying process wherein I challenge myself to see how blatantly I can put my feelings on display, many of which are loaded with shame, guilt, bitterness, and anxiety. Humor is very important to me so that has been a useful tool in navigating that last part”. 

#3 You Should Have At Least Sent A Card

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#4 You Picked The Wrong One

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#5 You’re Next

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#6 They Come Back But They’re Never The Same – III

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#7 I Came Here To Try To Have A Good Time

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#8 El-Dorado Gift Shop – II

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#9 Milkvetch – How Much More Can They Hold

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#10 Earth Before Eyeballs Existed

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#11 El-Dorado Gift Shop – I

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In response to a query about how long she has been crocheting and when she started using it in her creations, McCormack explained, “My grandfather carved detailed wooden birds and my grandmother was a skilled crocheter. She taught me how to crochet when I was four years old and would inspect my work, instructing me to “rip it” if she detected a slipped stitch. When he passed away, I was in my very early twenties. She had dementia and would forget that he was no longer alive a few times every hour, so family members were always at the house to guide her through the recurrent grief process. During that period, I started using her reserves of tiny, old crochet hooks and cotton string to craft amorphous masses of lace, I think to meditatively channel the broken record in which she was trapped into some kind of a shared, physical medium. She passed away shortly after that. While grieving, I realised that applying various stiffening agents to the material lent it a brittle, bone-like texture, and further discovered that the lace patterns were visually resonant of osteological tissue viewed through a microscope. Thats when it clicked that crochet could be used as a super malleable sculptural modality. I began using the technique I had been developing to construct objects paying tribute to my grandparents’ lifelong craft pursuits, and thus this taxonomy of crocheted skeletal specimens came into being”.

#12 Blorb – I

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#13 Blorb – II

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#14 Never Let The Party Die

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#15 They Come Back But They’re Never The Same – V

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#16 They Come Back But They’re Never The Same – III

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#17 They Come Back But They’re Never The Same – II

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#18 They Come Back But They’re Never The Same – I

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#19 Southpaw – I

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#20 Southpaw – II

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Regarding her creative process, McCormack revealed, “I don’t really reference patterns in a traditional sense. When I’m working on an animal skeleton sculpture, I typically try to find a local science museum where that creature’s osteological remains are on display. I will observe the specimen from many angles and will then draw up a series of sketches from memory, because a lot of my work has to do with the ways that memory can warp our perspectives over time. I’ll visually break the sketch down into individual parts and, because I am obsessed with personal associations with certain numbers, multiples of those numbers will be used to determine how many stitches each part should be comprised of. It’s sort of a strange reverse-engineering of typical patterning but in the end, it is a way to make sure that the proportions of each sculpture are consistent. I use a very tiny, very old hook to crochet antique cotton thread, dredge it in a goop made from various glues and fabric stiffeners, and shape it into sculptural forms after it dries. I block the wet components out on large sheets of plastic, peel them off when they’re dry, and place them into compositions. A lot of my string is sourced from estate sales, flea markets, discarded sidewalk piles, plus inheritances from deceased family members. My grandmother and her sisters used a lot of the thread that is present in my work to create doilies and delicate accessories during the Great Depression. Sometimes I dye the crocheted material with pigments foraged during hikes or I’ll coat the lace with multiple layers of enamel paint, which creates a sinewy, ropey effect”.

#21 Best-Behavior – I

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#21 Best-Behavior – II

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