The Jersey Devil Made Me Do It
Toss another skill onto the pile. I just tried needle felting for the first time and, contrary to my worst fears, it didn’t turn out too bad.
Stay out of my woods!
And as long as we’re discussing fears, I employed a childhood terror as inspiration. The Jersey Devil, a beast I heard countless tales about during my youth in New Jersey, served as the spark for this sculpt. A chimera whose stomping grounds are the vast Pine Barrens of the Garden State, The Jersey Devil fueled both my imagination and nightmares for years.
The fog is so thick I can’t see my claw in front of my snout!
The design for my version of ‘the flying death’ leans toward cute and cuddly. Was that my attempt to soften the impact this monster had on my impressionable childhood brain? Many a hike in the woods was spent looking over my shoulder to make sure this misshapen thing wasn’t tracking me. But no, his sweetness is a storytelling element.
The initial design sketch that helped guide me.
You see, my Jersey Devil is a young babe in the woods, having just been born (the backstory of said event involves a witch and a curse) and hasn’t yet grown into his more fearful, adult form. This is an adolescent Jersey Devil at most, still wending his way through the pines, still deciding whether it’s sheep, or cows, or both that he’ll slaughter in the night for sustenance, just beginning his journey toward becoming a local legend.
And the legend claims he never poked his fingers once…
And, as a final note on this journey of mine to become a fiber artist — while I enjoyed myself, and enjoyed learning the basics of the process, I’m not sure it’s entirely for me. I have a wicked lack of patience, and patience is a requirement with this particular art form.
Unsure of whether a demon has a belly button, I didn’t give him one.
You know who has that kind of patience? My studio parter, Michelle. Without my having watched her for years, stabbing away at clumps of wool (and her fingers) for hours on end to turn them into works of art, I never would’ve been able to make this little devil. Without her patiently answering every tiresome question I had about the process over the years, I’d have never learned some of the things I used during the sculpting of this demon.
At this stage, I still could’ve made him into a jackalope.
So, I offer half the credit of my relative success with this project to her. The other half goes to the thirteenth child of Mother Leeds who, in a perfect world, is still lurking in the shadows of the Pine Barrens, and in the fever dreams of children all over New Jersey.
Remember not to wander through the Pine Barrens at night!
If you want to see me birth this unholy monster from a few piles of dyed wool, Michelle and I put together a process video that shows how it was done and delves (briefly) into the history of the Jersey Devil. For the brave and curious, watch if you dare.