How Twinkie Chan's Sucre Fleuf! Came to Life
At Sweet Tooth Hotel, we always say that one of the greatest accomplishments of an installation is that it looks joyfully effortless. We can all agree that Twinkie Chan's installation Sucre Fleuf! is one of those amazingly perfect creations and you'd never know how much planning, support and ingenuity it took to bring it life. In fact, each crocheted bakery creation is its own mathematical masterpiece.
Read on for an inside look into what it takes to plan and build a Sweet Tooth Hotel art installation, with a narration from Twinkie Chan herself.
The Beginning
Before we launch a project with each artist we share the most boring of boring floor plans with them. The original idea for Intangible was to take a very tangible form of art, fiber art, and have each artist create their own world inside of Sweet Tooth Hotel. Twinkie Chan is well known for being a "crochet baker" and after a couple of conceptual iterations she decided upon a fantastical bakery named Sucre Fleuf!. Here's an overhead view of her space and read on to hear how this installation came to life in her own words.
The Creation of Sucre Fleuf! As Told by Twinkie Chan
When I see my name on signage and marketing as the artist for my crochet installation, “Sucre Fleuf!”, I always wish I could tell everyone how much help I had and how I could not have made any of it happen without extra hands. It takes a village, as they say, to crochet a bakery, and I’m excited to have the chance to reveal some behind-the-scenes action and high-five the people
who made all of this sugary magic come to life.
Since I live in San Francisco and the installation venue, Sweet Tooth Hotel, is in Dallas, I was already nervous about how to ship my crochet work if it were big and how to help prep the space if I lived nearly 2,000 miles away. Plus, I had a day job four days a week which limited the time I could spend on this enormous undertaking.
What ended up happening on my part was a lot of planning, managing, and outsourcing. I handled all the concepting and pattern-designing (except for one pattern which I’ll note later), but as an artist, my instinct was to make everything myself and crochet every inch of the installation. That was just not realistic. I’m glad that I leaned on other people, though, because meeting new people in your creative community, drawing on each other’s strengths, and feeling the power of collaboration is truly invigorating and inspiring.
I started the whole process with some rough Photoshop sketches. I chose a big hallway in Sweet Tooth, and I started imagining my dream bakery inside of it. Jencey, the owner of Sweet Tooth, requested that I break up the hallway space with different environments, so I then imagined this bakery in the middle of a garden or forest. I tried to keep structures simple and easy to execute because I had never worked on such a large project before, but Jencey was awesome and always encouraged me to dream big. I had no idea we would end up building out an actual front façade for Sucre Fleuf! and it turned out so perfectly! I’m not sure that I ever met the team who did the actual construction, but I know that Sweet Tooth’s team did a lot of the painting and prep. Also, I have to credit Jencey for the idea of turning the “second story” windows into tv screens with video footage of me walking past them. I love that little detail!
Photos by Kathy Tran
For the actual crocheting, I called upon some of my long-time helpers, and I also reached out for more help via an open call on Instagram. My turnaround times were always very short for various reasons, and I’m so grateful for the hustle that my crochet elves mustered in the name of art. Only one of them also lives in San Francisco, so I coordinated a lot of yarn-shipping in various batches with everyone else. My helpers did most of the basic crochet construction on their assigned pieces, but I wanted to handle most if not all of the finishing touches on my own, so I needed to make sure they delivered in different stages so that I could keep writing and prepping new patterns while also embellishing finished projects from a previous batch. I’m not going to say it was a well-oiled machine, because let’s face it, life is real and nothing goes as planned, but I certainly couldn’t have produced this body of work alone.
- Rita (my very first crochet helper for over 10 years!)– ritabakez – sourdough turtles
- Gretchen Wu – kitty loaves, swan cream puffs, parts of the raspberry St. Honorés
- Lizi Bronzon – lizilovescake – bunny baguettes, teddy bear bread rolls, garden bunnies
- Emy Kind – Rosemary’s Baby MEK – candles for bday cakes, pup croissants, all the donuts for the donut walls, decorations for sheet cakes
- Amanda M. – strawberries and leaves
- Thread.Winners – marshmallow bunnies
- Trisha Vicari – marshmallow bunnies
- Sara Tibbs – rands crafts – heart cakes and birthday cakes
- Kat “PK” Delurgio – Namaste Stitches – cream puff towers, tiny bear cakes, star cakes, jelly fish, cinnamon snails
- Wendy Chavalia – Crochet in the Falls by Wendy – cream puff towers, mice
- Erin Manke – EMankeCrochet – ice cream cone friends
- Me – all designs (except for the waffle cones, pattern purchased and used with permission from my friend Copacetic Crochet), wedding cake, sheet cakes, garden caterpillars
Photos by Kathy Tran
Sucre Fleuf! also couldn't have happened without our partners Craft Yarn Council and their amazing members who donated more than 2.5 million linear feet of yarn to make Intangible possible.
How many skeins of yarn did you receive for your Sweet Tooth Hotel installation?
About 100 skeins.
What brand and fiber content did you use in your installation?
Mostly Lion Brand Vanna's Choice and Red Heart Super Saver, but I also supplemented along the way with other brands that I purchased.
What colors did you use for your installation?
Yummy ones! Lots of warm browns for bread; candy pinks and teals for frosting.