Weaving magic: the Flow sculpture series
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- čas přidán 8. 03. 2023
- This video contains footage taken during the time I made the sculpture series FLOW. Some of that work is now sold, some are still available in my online shop on my website.
Words spoken are my own.
Music:
Epidemic Sound: Candelion-streak of light. Lama House - Secrets of the Earth.
I am a full-time basket maker and artist living in Tipperary, Ireland with my family. Off-grid in the forest on a mountain.
My website: hannavanaelst.com/
FREE Online course BASKET MAKING FOR BEGINNERS:
www.hannavanaelst.com/online-...
My online program: BECOMING A BASKET MAKER. 3 courses
Course 1: Round work
Course 2: Oval work
Course 3: Square work
hannavanaelst.com/online-cour...
Facebook group:
This group is to discuss basket making techniques and materials for basket making, learn from each other, share projects and pictures and pose questions: Basket making with Hanna Van Aelst
Instagram: / hannavanaelst - Krátké a kreslené filmy
What a beautiful and artistic video. The intrinsic weaving, the poetry of your words, and the soothing sounds of the running water. Thank you for sharing this glimpse into your world.
Thanks for those kind words!
Beautiful amazing woman making beautiful amazing treasures from God's garden! A Beautiful life you live, so very peaceful.....A little piece of Heaven!
Love love love you are weaving magic bravo!✌❤ hope we keep seing what you are doing that is what peace of life is!✌❤
Hanna, thank you so much for sharing. Watching you weaving in your workshop and walking the woods is both inspiring and meditative. Much appreciation.
Thank you Robert, glad to hear.
Willow is fantastic and so is your work! Thanks to you I have started appreciate and see even more the properties and possibilities of willow as a material - a healer and nurturer to humans. The Willow tree really is the symbol of feminine strength, nurture and flexibility reminding us of inner and outer trust, harmony but also wisdom. Giving nectar early in the spring to the bees and insects but also providing an excellent building and sculpting material as well as food for the wildlife - also medicine! Also stabilising the earth by drinking so much water. Its absolutely beautiful and essential to get our eyes open to see the beauty and importance of this tree. You help us with that:)
Wow! Incredible! My second thought is I wonder if your ancestors would look at you sideways for those baskets’ shapes 😂 it’s really beautiful work ❤
You seem to sojourn from strength to untamed power. Lovely sculptural series and vid! Hey we need a willow bed update! I am dying to know how your pollarding is going! Here, I feel I am having some great success finally with my willow beds. Weaving not so much as last year was the first year with any real crop that I did not just replant. But pollarding high with a lot of deer pressure is working great. Coppice in my garden willow beds is really producing great as well. Here the clay and light are challenges as well as all else. Anyway, nice to see you hit your mark and sing! Don't hold back now, just go for it!
Such a beauty. Thank you very much for sharing this. Much love and peace!
So inspiring!!
I love the use of colour flowing through the basket 🤩
Makes me want to get weaving!!
I am here referencing your talk on the idea of self criticism. I very much enjoyed what you have to say on the subject. Here is a story of my own experience and the growth that came with it. This story happened about the year 1980. - - -
For me, the acquisition of some skills was illusive. It took me years of daily practice to master the skill of pulling handles. Sure, I admit that I put wispy,poorly applied handles on pots for years. However, I felt bad about every single one. Yet, every one was the best that I could do at that moment in time. I knew they didn’t feel right or look right. Thankfully I had the vision to see and to know that. Every day, I spent at least an hour pulling handles over a slurry pail, letting each one fall to its deserving death, to be recycled and resurrected again for another exercise. Usually, it was the first thing I did in the morning after attending to the clay mixing barrels and wedging the day’s supply of clay. On most mornings I would pull about ten pounds of practice handles. I also exercised pulling handles directly off of pots. I threw pots of various sizes and shapes especially for handle pulling practice. It is easy to see that I devoted a good bit of studio time to support the practice of pulling handles. It was that important to me. Still, it was drudgery. Some part of me knew, however,that one day I would arrive at the point where my practicing would allow me to be able to pull any type of handle, of any shape, width, or length that I wanted or needed. For years this did not happen. Every day the results seemed to be the same. It was extremely frustrating but I stayed with it like religion.
I don’t know why, but my expectations were wrong. I have dabbled with music my entire life. Practicing on a regular basis has always brought continuing bits of progress in a stepping stone fashion. Difficult fingerings and maneuvers became gradually easier and smoother with repetition. Learning one thing would open a small door to make learning another thing easier. There seemed to be connections and links between one musical learning path and other musical paths. When I learned to draw, it was very much the same way. I had this expectation of incremental progress with handle pulling but it didn’t happen. Slow improvement with small advances were frustrating enough but almost no improvement or advancement, over a long period of time, was often just torture. Sure,there was some improvement over the years since I left school but it was minimal.
One morning I began the daily ritual of practice and it was totally different. I am pretty sure that I did everything exactly as I normally would, but that day it felt different. That was it, it was a feeling not a product and not an intellectual act! That day I felt the clay. I felt it with my fingers. I felt it with my hands. I felt it with my eyes. I didn’t just look at the clay and see the clay; I actually felt the clay with my eyes. The whole process was about feeling. It was a day of epiphany. I never thought it would all come together in a single moment but it did. The day before every handle I pulled was serviceable but lacking in grace, authority, and fluidity. Suddenly I felt like I could pull powerful handles of any width, cross section, or length. So, that’s what I started to do. I pulled all the little handle plugs I had fashioned for the morning’s practice and stuck them to edge of a worktable. I rolled up a cone of about three pounds of clay and tried to see how long I could pull a handle. It was longer than thirty inches because it touched the floor when I stuck it to the table top. I took what was left of the cone and did it again and again and again. It wasn’t just a long handle but the cross section was pleasantly hefty and two dorsal ridges evenly spaced for the whole length. The two dorsal ridges were indicative of the Alfred, New York style of handle. The handles each had a pleasing, slow, gradual taper from one end to the other. I pulled handles that were of an English style with one dorsal ridge. I pulled round handles and round handles with multiple ridges. I pulled handles with a square cross section. I pulled handles with my right hand. I pulled handles with my left hand. I tired to see how wide I could pull a handle with either hand. I stuck a large wide cone of clay to a table top to see how wide and how long I could pull a handle using both hands. I brought out the tray of handle practice pots and attached little noses of clay of various widths to the pots and pulled handles directly from the pots. I had never been able to successfully do that to my own satisfaction before. Instantly I realized that it would, from that day forward, be the method I would use to attach handles almost all of the time. Although it had nothing to do with pulling handles, I decided that day that I would try to once-fire pottery from that point on, no more pointless bisque firings. Not only had I acquired the control of the clay in pulling handles that day but I think I became a different person. Or at the least, I had become a very different version of the person I had been the day before. I could feel the clay and that made me feel as though I had been pulling handles for ever like the handles I had been pulling that day. My fingers and hands experimented with subtle pressures and movements. My whole being became filled with a mystical spiritual joy. Within a few hours I had stuck a handle to every available surface and every available pot. My apron was covered with slurry. I held the clay as high as I could to keep from tiring. Slurry covered both arms and when I raised my arms high; the slurry ran into my armpits. It was a glorious feeling. By noon that day I could no longer remember not having the feeling, which was just the day before, when I didn’t have total control of the clay in pulling handles. Maybe it would be better to say that I couldn’t remember a time when I was not one with the clay. I couldn’t remember a time when I couldn’t feel the clay in such a way that I knew what the clay wanted orn eeded. I could no longer remember what it felt like to not be able to pull beautiful handles.
At some point my oldest daughter, Heather, had entered the room but I hadn’t noticed her. I have no idea how long she had been quietly watching me. Time has always been a mystery to me.
I heard her small voice say, “Dad, you’re starting to scare me”.
Startled, I turned and asked, “What do you mean”?
“You’ve got handles stuck everywhere. What are you doing”, she asked?
“I’m just happy”, I said, “Yesterday I couldn’t pull handles like this and today I can”.
“I think I better go tell mom”, she said in a dramatic worried manner and disappeared back into the house. She was truly concerned. I’m sure she thought I had completely lost my mind. She is over forty years old now and she still loves telling the story about me sticking handles everywhere in the workshop.
It may seem very strange but I knew what the feeling would be like the first time I saw someone else skillfully working in clay. I knew it was something I had to do. I knew I had to get that feeling. The feeling was like the memory of something remote and long ago. When it all came together on one day it wa slike a physical muscle memory that had been reclaimed from time. I think I knew what it would feel like because it was suddenly such a familiar feeling. At some point in time I think I had done it all before.
I spent the following several days designing and making items constructed with just pulled handles. I made bud vases and candlesticks and wall sconces. I practiced attaching handles that ended in a smooth fluid billowing flow, like the waves of a ribbon. I practiced applying wide sturdy handles, horizontally, to the sides of large planters. I pulled short, medium and long handles of various profiles from the undersides of pots to become legs. I involved myself totally in a sort of orgy of handle pulling and application. As an adult I’m not sure that I was, ever before, so excited by any other activity or skill acquisition. For a short while it was all consuming.
Eventually things once again became more balanced. Handle pulling accepted its rightful place as one of an arsenal of useful potter’s skills. However, physically, aesthetically, and spiritually, pulling handles remains at the top of my list of favorite pleasurable pottery activities. It also always gives me great pleasure to pickup someone else’s pots to more closely examine and admire the beauty of a well pulled and expertly attached handle. Sadly, it is not often that I experience such handles.
What a beautiful story. I totally and completely understand that feeling of flow and a remembering of the skill. I truly believe we can plug into some sort of ancient memory by making, like you were saying, as if you already knew it before.
I admire your tenacity and joy in making. Thanks for sharing this with me!
Just stunning! You’ve inspired me to learn basket weaving. I was so happy to see a new video from you… it’s like saying hello to a wise friend.
Oh darling thank you, so happy you started weaving baskets and that you are here.xxx
Hannah this is a wonderful video of your process and the true meaning of your inner self. Very best wishes
Thanks Aishling!
This is absolutely beautiful!
Good❤
It looks like you landed in a nice place in this life with I am sure many struggles along the way! I live among the people, far from rivers, fields and nature, like willows, exposed to disease, intruders, weeds and hardship but hopefully we will weave together and support one another and become like mighty oaks!
Magnifique !!!!
You are an inspiration, Hanna. I hope all is well.
Hello Hanna, were are you come back please
Thank you
For this beatiful film and words.
Its healing 🙏
100%, Thanks
Please continue to share.
Those are stunningly beautiful! A lifeboat womb, which I guess are the same thing at different seasons of life.❤️🤗🐝
So true!
@@HannaVanAelst 🤗
Beautiful work, lovely transcendent video. Thank you for sharing.
I've got 80 willow cuttings coming, keep up the good work!
❤️👍👍👍
Wonderful and inspiring video. So pleased you are staying true to yourself and not being pulled by the force of the internet. Love what you do and love your beautiful inspiring words for life.
Thank you Maggie, thanks for being here...
😊🍀⚘🌻
Beautiful, thank you
Excellent ❤
Oh my grandchildren would love to get some different verity clippings from you if that is possible? Do you have any for sale? I homeschool 12 grandchildren.
Очень мне нравится эта девушка, часто смотрю её ролики. Красивые вещи плетёт. ПРОФИ !
Thanks!
@@HannaVanAelst , я хоть и не понимаю, но СПАСИБО !
Très belle réalisation !!!
Gorgeous in every way!
Thanks Kate!
Beautiful work. Beautiful video❤
Thank you very much!
好美
Beautiful work ❤❤
Thank you Laura!
Hi Hanna, I am very interested in learning to weave but I am having problems trying to contact yourself and others in Ireland. Are you still active as I also tried to subscribe to the learning links.
Hi Patrick, I am here. Email me at info@hannavanaelst.com
@@HannaVanAelstа из России можно?
@@HannaVanAelstcould I ask what species this is and is it a different species for fence weaving I would love start this next year. Any information would be very appreciated.
Краса! У Вас дуже гарні роботи! Привіт з України 💙💛
"Promosm"
Капкан для рыб- жестоко…
Is this made for catching fish !!??
🤣
@@HannaVanAelst I saw you put it in the river so I thought maybe it’s a useful basket for the sort of fish catching techniques!!
It might be, never tried!
@@HannaVanAelst I’m just curious , i dont mean to be degrading your work in anyway.
@@HannaVanAelst but thanx for the feed back, as much as it can be.
Hey - thanks for never showing us how those living willow structures worked out. 👍
Hey thanks for your impatience! Willow teaches patience. It is coming!
Nothing like a useful woman. I got all hot and bothered watching this.