Reindeer joik and Fjällraven

Sometimes when you visit a place, you hear the song of it in the landscape and sometimes, if one is very lucky, that hum continues even after returning home. This is true of my time in the north of Norway, in the land of Sápmi. With Reindeer Joik, I endeavored to capture the song of the land, the colors of the autumn tundra and the magic I felt there.

Reindeer Joik is made using an antique doll body and vintage kid leather glove for the head. The glove has been fashioned with many layers of paper into a group of seven reindeer. On the back of the head the midnight sun is portrayed. A red fox (fjällraven) accompanies Reindeer Joik on its journey. The body is collaged with my mom’s old clothing patterns and painted with acrylic and clay paints. The reindeers antlers have been fashioned out of copper. Though autumn is imagined in the tundra colors of the seven reindeer, icy blue antique beads are sewn on the legs as a metaphor for the ice and snow that will soon cover the land.

Reindeer Joik is a one of a kind mixed media textile sculpture measuring 22.5 x 7 x 4 inches with a hanging loop on the back.

photo by addison doty