A bitch of Branches

Who's that girl....

One of my latest projects, I've been making a sculpture out of Willow tree branches. I prefer to call it a "bitch of branches" (so called "takkenwijf" in Dutch or "kärring eller häxa av pil" på Svenska). It started with cutting back our willow tree and in the neighborhood a lot of young trees were cut down by our neighbor. So lots of branches available. Years ago I got a picture from my friend Marjolein. Ever since I wanted to make something like this. So this was the moment to start it. 

We started with a wooden frame, covered with chicken wire, a lot of short cut birch branches (bjorkris) and a lot of patience. Just put in the branches round by round, hour for hour, in the early spring sun, til you get too much cold in your fingers. Inside a made the form of a head, out of willow tree. Later a started making the arms and body out of willow tray. 

The finishing touch was the ladies hair, some moss and a shawl of dried Clematis in her neck. I'm very proud about this project, though it took many hours te create it. But as long as you have fun and time, it doesn't matter. But it's too expensive to produce more of them 😄.