Breathing a colourful life into wool

‘‘With art I get frustrated with stuff that’s all beauty.’’ Cindy Walter, knitter

Sitting on Cindy Walter’s coffee table is a human-like skull, adorned with a rainbow mohawk.

The creation is not a real skull, and it’s not really a true mohawk, either. It’s all part of a large scale art project.

The mohawk is made out of wool that Walter has hand-dyed, while the skull is made of plaster.

It’s one of 60 life-sized skulls that have been given to Taranaki artists for a project called Skulltopia.

While there are bound to be some macabre creations, Walter, who has been hand dyeing wool since 2008, said she knew her work would be covered in rainbows.

‘‘I wanted it to be bright and colourful and rainbow-like, because that’s what I like working with, and that’s what I like dyeing as well,’’ she said.

Walter, who sells her wool under her brand name NanaCindy, describes herself as a knitter, a crocheter and a general fibre artist.

‘‘For the skull, I started with just a few pieces and then I decided I needed something to give it some structure and some height, so I thought I’d see how a mohawk turned out.

‘‘I kind of like that it is tactile as well. With art I get frustrated with stuff that’s all beauty and no function, and I suppose I like the fact that you can sit here and play with it. It’s meant to be sort of humorous. I’ve always been kind of attracted to skulls, but with a little bit of humour with it.

‘‘I come from a really creative family, and I always have to have some sort of project. Knitters always have lots of projects on the go,’’ the 31-year-old said.

Skulltopia is an art project, where 60 artists were given an identical blank skull and 30 days to create a masterpiece for the Great New Zealand Craft Show, on in Taranaki over the first weekend in June.