Big eyed scrapper to save your heart is a creation by artist Karna aka cocoondesigns. Like several of Karna's little creatures, his stomach contains a stone from Lake Michigan for good wishes and is upcycled from old sweaters. He is pretty unique, although some of Karna's patterns are duplicated as custom orders, but even those made from a pattern promise to be a little different based on the materials available. Personally, I don't know what I like best: his rotund posture, or his inner-tube which he allegedly uses to save the faint of heart. 


Karna's surreal stitched tree scenes make my mind wander into all sorts of fun fantasies. I think of hobbit holes and David the Gnome. The big eyes and eyelids on many of her characters make me think of the illustrations by Robin James in the Serendipity children's book series. I'm reminded of the stitched floppiness portrayed in the characters from the 80s animated movie Wizards, while the trees in her landscapes remind me of those seen in Hayao Miyazaki's animated films: Totoro and Castle in the Sky. I think of the mystical album covers of the band YES painted by Roger Dean in the '70s. Yet Karna's creatures and landscapes are as real as the exploded comic landscapes of Sarah Sze or the puppets in Jim Henson's Dark Crystal. Despite all these connections, cocoondesigns still has managed to assemble all her creations using her own unique voice which is probably why her work is going to be featured in an upcoming group show called "Creatures" at Ghetto Gloss gallery in L.A. this coming September.

From a child's perspective, coming from a child-at-heart, Karna's creatures are for the imaginative. The same way a child will imagine a narrative for any coveted thing, it is easy to imagine a magical narrative for each one of Karna's creatures. One can imagine both a narrative that not only tells the story of the creature, but also the story of the process by which each creature or landscape came to be, after all, even stuffed things deserve a creation myth. Each stitch, or each piece of sweater or plaid, becomes part of the patchwork story that brings every unique item to life.