Tired of Winning

Needle felted life-sized wolf with mixed media embellishments, draped in wool and mixed media fleeces, 2025

Tired of Winning is a body of work that began to take shape in the spring of 2025 in an effort to make sense of a rapidly shifting information climate in the dawn of this strange, post-truth reality. We have long been warned to watch out for wolves in sheep’s clothing, and here a ravening wolf prowls, already in our midst.

In this installation, a life-sized needle-felted wolf stalks the gallery space shrouded in a fleece whose bold patterning calls to mind the lesser-known dazzle camouflage that was implemented during the first World War. This unconventional camouflage technique was used not to conceal – but to confuse. With bright colors and optical patterns, it succeeded in disorienting the opposition who struggled to discern a ship’s position and trajectory because of the disruption of traditional visual reference points.

The wolf was fabricated without an internal wire armature. Instead, polyester fibers were needle-felted to create a dense core upon which natural wool was added to increase its structural integrity and give the wolf a woolen outward appearance. At its heart however, this wolf is inherently artificial with its cheap, synthetic core – a phony, an impostor, a charlatan since its very genesis.

The fleeces have been constructed on pieces of military surplus blankets – the coarse, army-green wool providing a canvas for swaths of patriotic stripes of needle-felted wool and a mix of wool and acrylic yarn stitched into shaggy fringes, with beads, sequins, and fake gold adornments creating a glut of ostentatious sparkle and distraction.

In this era where deep fakes, misinformation, AI slop, and blatant lies have muddied the waters of reality, it has become increasingly difficult to suss out fact from fiction or to predict what might be lurking beyond the horizon. With the dizzying pace of the news cycle and the seemingly endless barrage of targeted content shaped by social media algorithms, it all begins to feel like an intentionally disarming whirlwind of confusion and distraction.

Through this work, viewers are invited to keep a close eye on the wolves in our midst that may seek to disorient and divide us.