Please note: This piece is on currently on loan to the Torggler Museum. It remains available for purchase and will ship after October 8, 2022.

Wolfbiter consists of crocheted cotton string, glue, enamel paint, steel pins.

The framed piece measures 22.25 inches high x 18.5 inches wide x 3.75 inches deep.

In the artist’s words: My practice primarily involves crocheted cotton thread, which is dredged in a mixture of non-toxic glues, natural dyes, and foraged pigments, and fashioned into sculptural forms. The works, rendered by way of a meticulous, self-taught process, are stiffened and positioned to resemble animal and humanoid specimens, as well structures in various states of decay, mingling with rhizospheric debris and half-forgotten nostalgic murmurs. The cotton string central to this process is typically sourced from estate and garage sales, as well as collections inherited from my deceased family members, who used it during the Great Depression to create delicate adornments for their homes and bodies. My grandmother taught me how to crochet when I was very young and the practice is deeply entwined with my lifelong compulsion to produce hand-wrought objects in response to the world around me. These works integrate a profound appreciation for the trans-generational legacy of craft in my family with an ongoing account of my experiences with mental illness, resulting in an intimate archive of emotional vessels.

I produce these delicate sculptures in order to explore themes such as isolation, the intersection of craft and gender, and my personal navigation of trauma, as well as my relationship with nature. My most recent series of crocheted objects features nostalgic, decaying items stripped of their original uses and repurposed to examine adolescent woes, lifelong curiosities and—at an increasing rate—an enraged, bemused, and desperate response to the state of the world. I wish to give the impression that a garment has disintegrated and reformed itself, warped by the passing of time, in the image of a castle in ruin or a tenacious creature's remains, to reflect upon the persistence of memory and the relationship between cloth and living, organic forms.

Caitlin McCormack (b. 1988) is a Philadelphia-based fiber artist and art educator. Her crocheted cotton thread sculptures have been displayed across the US and internationally, in solo and group exhibitions at The Mütter Museum, The Taubman Museum of Art, Mesa Contemporary Art Museum, Museum Rijswijk, Rhodes Contemporary, Hashimoto Contemporary, The Morbid Anatomy Museum, The Fort Wayne Museum of Art, and SPRING/BREAK Art Show in NYC. She has held teaching positions at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Hussian College of Art and Design in Philadelphia. McCormack is the 2020 recipient of a Joseph Robert Foundation grant.

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