In Hämeenkyrö, Finland, a true crochet artist is among us. Her crochet skills are completely out of this world, and she crochets the most unorthodox things.
Case in point: she crocheted a life-sized carbon copy of a villager and her dog, down to the patterned sweater and the glasses. This isn’t even the only time she’s crocheted something like this.
She’s crocheted all sorts of different life-size people, and all of them are absolutely incredible.
Liisa Hietanen has become known in her town for her incredible artistic ability, and she’s been known to crochet all sorts of different people from her village.
Hietanen uses metal armatures as her base, then covers them in crochet and other crafting techniques. The result? Something so uncanny that from afar, you can barely tell they aren’t real people.
In an artist’s statement, Lisa describes her process for choosing her subjects and how she follows through with her process.
“The process of choosing a model is intuitive,” she says. “The person depicted might be someone I meet in the library, in the locker room of the gym or walking their dog on the way home. I don’t know most of my models beforehand but as the process goes on I get to know them.”
People aren’t her only models. Hietanen also uses things like food as inspiration for her crocheted pieces of art.
She explains that she knits these sculptures for two reasons: for all sculptures, creating them slows down the fast pace of everyday life, allowing her to relax her mind. The other reason, unsurprisingly, is to see the satisfaction she gets from the models.
“After settling in Hämeenkyrö I wanted my work in the village to be meaningful both for myself and the others living there,” she explains. “When each Villager sculpture is finished I bring them to public sites in Hämeenkyrö for the locals to see.”
Now these sculptures are meaningful not only to the villagers, but to people all over the world.