Soft textile sculptures
Sculpting from fabric, using threads and sewing to for shapes, came very natural to me. When I started creating soft textile sculptures, puppets, my grandmother had a fairly large collection of stocking, which I used for making many of puppets as stockings and tights are made to look like skin it was a perfect material to create a illusion of skin on the creatures I created and nylon is one of the most flexible textiles for making shapes by stuffing and stitching.
My background is Latvian, where pagan, mythological influences and connection to natural world are quite strong. Consequently I was studying folklore of the Baltic and Scandinavian region and its influence in my work are evident. One may say that puppets can appear ugly and disturbing, but I use striking features to create emotion and portray character.
One of the puppets, which was initially just a Christmas present became a start in a animated short: