UPDATE
Thank you so much to all who participated. Some photos
here
and here

let us know if you have feedback or photos to share.

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The Wool Room
Commissioned by First Night Austin
December 31 2008, Downtown Austin

The Wool Room is a temporary living room for the city, a cozy place to settle in to winter, reflect, create, and play. It is a large scale public sculpture, a hands-on workshop, an interactive art work and a collaboration with the city: Art which instructs and invites the viewer “Please DO Touch”.

The Wool Room will be constructed of reclaimed wool sweaters and yarn which have been transformed into curtain-walls, floors, and ceilings, as well as seating elements, work tables, and toys. This environment -alluding to a multi-hued snow fort or ice castle in it’s single material construction- will function both as a visual artwork in it’s own right, and as a specially prepared environment for ongoing workshops in wool crafts, where the public will be invited both to learn a new skill from the teachers provided by Skillshare Austin, and to share the skills they may already possess.

Skillshare Austin will be facilitating a four week workshop series leading up to First Night, hosted by The Gallery at Treasure City Thrift. During the workshops, residents of the immediate neighborhood surrounding Treasure City (East Austin, centered on the intersection of 12th and Chicon) as well as residents of the entire city, will be invited to spend the evening in the gallery/workshop space, learning and teaching knitting, crochet, hand sewing and embroidery skills. The pieces created during these evenings will be incorporated into the wool room both as a display of the neighborhood’s work and an inspiration to the families who come into the Wool Room to create during the First Night afternoon. Photographers will be invited to document the piece and the activity within on First Night and to display their photographs the following month at the Gallery at Treasure City, bringing the project full circle: out into center of the city and then back into the neighborhood in which it originated.

About the Artist and Collaborating Organizations

Cory Skuldt began her life as an artist in increasingly technical media: first printing photographs in the darkroom and cutting and splicing small gage film, then editing digital photographs and video on a computer. An experiment in installation work a few years ago led her in a new direction –she began to create knitted and sewn forms to project her videos on to, and discovered a long forgotten love for the sensorial experience of crafting with touchable, beautiful, and accessible materials. She now especially enjoya creating interactive pieces which involve the view in the process of creation both in terms of influencing the end product and in having a tactile as well as visual experience of the work.
There's a resume, if you're into that kind of thing, here

About Skillshare Austin
Skillshare Austin (www.skillshareaustin.org) aims to build community self reliance, increasing our ability to live creatively and sustainably through engaging in hands on educational experiences. Our initial project was a weekend of interactive workshops, providing a temporary space for the free exchange of skills and knowledge. Ongoing projects include regularly scheduled workshops at diverse locations around Austin and a publicly accessible database of local skillsharers.

About Treasure City
Treasure City (www.treasurecitythrift.org) a volunteer-run thrift store which sells donated goods at prices lower than other thrift stores, truly affordable to all. Treasure City supports all local communities, many of whom are historically marginalized and neglected, by providing community space, education, resources and inspiration. We are committed to recycling our waste in an ethical and environmentally responsible fashion, while finding creative ways to reuse items that cannot be resold. Many things destined for the landfill still have a life worth living and every item at Treasure City is either donated or reclaimed from the waste stream. The Gallery at Treasure City, opening in the new year, will host monthly shows by local artists who creatively reuse materials donated to the store.