THE BEST SHE'S EVER FELT

Many people who coop themselves up to stay safe as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on might consider it a loss being unable to freely savor the season and go out to let the scented spring breeze caress their faces.

To Yin Yue, a 30-year-old needle felting sculpture artist who will stay at home and repeat the motion of stabbing wool over and over again from 8 am to midnight every day for several consecutive months when preparing an exhibition, the feeling of springtime FOMO－fear of missing out－is nothing new.

Basically, the time-consuming process of needle felting starts by rolling up a small amount of wool and puncturing it with a needle that has tiny barbs on the end, thus entangling the wool fibers and creating a denser material.

To build a woolen felt sculpture, the wool must be poked continuously until it becomes a round or cylindrical base onto which colorful wools, cottons and other materials can be added to achieve certain designs.

Although needle felting requires almost infinite patience to make finger-sized figurine, which would take a beginner at least a few hours of needlework, the craft still enjoys great popularity in China.

Today, it's easy to find a store on the online-shopping platform Taobao that sells more than 10,000 needle felting kits per month.

However, when Yin first picked up the barbed needle eleven years ago, the handicraft was much less popular.

Back then, she happened to see some pictures of the Japanese artist Chiaki Suzuki's felt sculptures and was suddenly captivated by their warm, soft and fluffy texture and delicate appearance.

"I got a strong desire to have a try. Then I searched out the raw materials on Taobao only to find one shop that offered the needle felting kits," she recalls.

She bought the barbed needles and a myriad colored wools.

Her initial efforts produced a tiny felt rabbit, which took a whole afternoon of skewering the wool to produce.

"I felt a strong sense of achievement when I held the adorable figurine, so I decided to learn the different needling techniques," she says.

After Yin graduated from Beijing Film Academy, where she studied 3D animation design, she didn't hunt for a stable job or apply to postgraduate programs like most of her classmates, but chose to carry on needle felting.

She made many cute characters based on fairy tales and posted the pictures on social media, where she was widely encouraged by others online who were curious about the craft and fond of her work.

A few years later, Yin began to make money by regularly providing photos to magazines.

In 2015, a Chinese curator who worked in Japan noticed her felt pieces and asked if she want to run an exhibition in Tokyo.

Supported by her family and friends, she grabbed the chance with both hands and spent more than a year preparing for it.

She chose to make felt mushrooms the centerpiece of her Japanese debut.

"As a person who used to lack confidence, I just wanted to focus on my own stuff, unnoticed, in the corner. In this sense I usually compare myself to the mushrooms, which silently grow in corners," she explains.

Initially, she just wanted to challenge herself simulating the morphological features of mushrooms. Later, she started to make anthropomorphic mushrooms that could express her own various moods.

That was, arguably, a seminal moment for her, as from then on she actually started to use her felt sculptures as a medium for self-expression, she says.

Later, she decided to represented herself at different stages of her life through a series of felt animals, such as an elephant huddled up in frustration, a Sphinx cat with two heads－one carrying an angry expression, and the other in a state of torpor－and a 103-centimeter-high deer that appears to have found inner peace.

She initially thought that people would favor cute felt sculptures while having little interest in her emotionally expressive artworks. Yet, the reality was unexpected.

At her latest exhibition, which launched on Oct 26, many people started queuing up the night before it opened, in a bid to ensure they would be in a prime position to get their hands on the most sought-after pieces before they sold out.

"When I find someone is staring at my art and there seems to be a strong connection between them, I feel that all of the repetitive, boring stabbing motions I performed, over countless hours, become worthwhile," she says.

Thanks to needle felting, Yin has also become increasingly confident over the years.

"I once thought of giving up," she recalls. "Because, as a freelancer, I failed to earn a stable income like most of my friends and I didn't believe in my ability to create outstanding work with felt."

Fortunately, Fei Si, her husband, studied fine arts from a very young age and is a keen supporter on her continued exploration of her art.

"Yin has her own style, that's very important in the art world," Fei states with spousal pride. "Although I've systematically learned painting skills, I just can't draw something or create a figurine to copy her distinctive style."

Yin says all of her felt sculptures have given her the power to face the passage of time.

"Now, instead of worrying about aging, I'm looking forward to seeing how time leaves its impression upon my work," she says.