Monsters haunt Jennifer Strunge. They lurk in every room of her home. Their bulging eyes stare from shelves. Their long, gangly arms reach out from every corner. They crowd her bedroom.
They even haunt her dreams — and Strunge could not be happier. “I love monsters,” says the 25-year- old artist from Baltimore, Md., whose handcrafted creatures are winning her an international following.
In wild and varying colors of vintage fabrics, made without patterns so that no two are ever alike, her monsters range from the size of a small doll to those big enough to eat a man.
Photography by Jennifer Strunge
“Monsters are awesome,” she says. “They have the capacity to frighten or protect, depending on whose side they are on. My monsters aren’t scary. Kids laugh at them.”
Strunge (rhymes with sponge) discovered her passion while working on her fine art degree in 2004, fabricating dozens of monsters crawling out from beneath a bed. “The monsters got a great response, and people kept asking me to make more,” she says.
But her hand-sewn creations aren’t content
skulking beneath beds. Strunge also created a bra with twin snaggle-toothed monster heads, a baroque dress with fabric ram’s horns sprouting from the shoulders, and an octopus to wear on your head.
Her oversized pieces include multicolored squid-like mutants, a hot pink mega-monster, and snakes peppered with dozens of lips. Several have been used in the local children’s puppet theater, where Strunge works when she’s not producing monsters.
Strunge’s home studio is piled high with fabric and monsters in various stages of construction. “I tend to work in a chaotic manner,” she smiles. “I’ll sit down to watch TV and be making eyeballs. There are always pins and needles in my bed.”
She sells her monsters at craft shows across the United States, and her website attracts buyers from around the world. But Strunge admits: “These monsters are like my babies. I spend so much time with each one in the making, sometimes it’s hard to give them up.” —Peter Sheridan
References:
Archives