Liisa Hietanen's still life and portrait sculptures in yarn
February 10, 2019 12:44 PM   Subscribe

Knitting is a popular pastime in Finland. Even Finnish Olympians were noted for knitting before and after their competitions at the 2018 Winter Olympics! (Mother Nature News) But Finnish artist Liisa Hietanen takes it to a whole new level (MNN) with her knitted and crocheted sculptures of real-life people and scenes (artist's website). Hietanen painstakingly crochets, knits and sometimes embroiders every single piece of her sculpture — from the clothes and accessories down to the objects a sculpture is holding.

She started on this road during art school, and her first fully completed piece was "Pirkko," a sculpture of her first-grade teacher. She was inspired to use crocheting as her medium because "the technique fit the character perfectly."

Found Hietanen's art from this Facebook post, where Raija and her dog stands next to her knit double.
posted by filthy light thief (7 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
These are amazing. The crocheted people are so realistic! And they somehow seem imbued with emotion and feeling.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:13 PM on February 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


Oh my goodness, these are wonderful! The faces! And the clothes!

Excuse me, I need to go cast on for a sock now.
posted by heatherlogan at 1:28 PM on February 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


I am so floored by the realism of her sculptures! This was a real treat to discover; thank you for posting.
posted by annieb at 4:53 PM on February 10, 2019


I love these. The self-portrait is great (last link) -- when it was floating around on Twitter, someone observed that the real Liisa's sweater is knitted, and rather than just knitting another sweater, the crocheted Liisa has a crocheted version of the sweater.

And the toilet and the tree branch and the radiators and the power strip ... oh, these are delightful.
posted by Gordafarin at 2:38 AM on February 11, 2019 [1 favorite]


The toilet paper!!
posted by infini at 3:08 AM on February 11, 2019


These are wonderful! Love the mom and nursing baby. But I fear for the bathroom and toilet if someone stumbles in late at night after an evening at the pub!
posted by mermayd at 6:19 AM on February 11, 2019


Even Finnish Olympians were noted for knitting before and after their competitions at the 2018 Winter Olympics!

Oh, okay. Took me a second to figure out that they had not somehow managed to make knitting a demonstration sport at the most recent Winter Olympics.
posted by Naberius at 8:25 AM on February 11, 2019


« Older 🥖-   |   Stoicism Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments