Foundation

  • Foundation, Forging my artistic mettle with woodwork and upholstery.

    Foundation

    Forging my artistic mettle with woodwork and upholstery.

    Before I discovered felt-making, I was pursuing a different life of craft:

     building mortise and tenon furniture from decommissioned oak casks and barrels in Northern California. The wood I worked with was of amazing old-growth quality; it was historic, from the original casks in California's first wineries. I delighted in revealing the stories held in that wood. Passing each board over the jointer, clearing away the years of weathered surface, chasing the pattern of the grain until it landed on the clearest color, that incredible red wine blush, that sparkling figure of the oak's golden rays-all of this deeply resonated with me, in me. Although the designs came from my partner, I knew I was getting through to the essence of the material.

  • Years later, I learned the basics of felt-making at my daughter's elementary school, where we created balls and toys simply through the agitation of fibers in soap and water. Feeling a moistened bundle of fine wool slipping over the surface of my skin, gently tickling it with my fingertips and coaxing the fibers to tangle more closely-to form their own skin-felt magical.
  • Transition, In 2009 I began the transition from wood to wool.

    Transition

    In 2009 I began the transition from wood to wool.
    The change in materials fostered a change in lifestyle; A quieter environment with materials that require more gentle and personal attention, rather than tools and industrial equipment. This allowed me to work closer to the home while raising my daughter and provided a studio environment that was a safer and friendlier place for visitors. I operated a small fiber import and resale business, Opulent Fibers, over the next seven years. Expanding through a handful of studios, each becoming a treasured place to foster ideas, share materials and techniques, and host local and international instructors in a variety of industrial and textile arts.
  • In creating felt, I found a re-creating of myself. After leaving woodworking and the life that went with it, the loose fibers of my life slowly tangled together into a strong, resilient fabric; I built a new community, and a new life, among textile artists. In doing so, I also honored the values I had nurtured in the woodshop: working sustainably, with low-impact materials, and with methods that revealed the materials' greatest potential. You could say I have slowly fallen in love with this gentle and quiet material.
  • my own story, through new materials

    my own story

    through new materials
    For the first few years, I worked with felt to emulate the beauty I saw in wood. By pushing the limits of the fibers, I could in some way re-create in this new material some of what I was awed by in my previous medium. I created a number of personally developed methods-for instance, first needle-felting thick layers of drapery silk into the wool to engineer new kinds of constructions. The resulting patterns and glittering details were reminiscent of those radiant rays of the wood grain I sought when building furniture.
  • And now,, Somehow, woodworking enters the scene again

    And now,

    Somehow, woodworking enters the scene again
     My studio now has space for my own wood and and metal workspace, used mostly for building jigs and frames to support textile works. Current projects aslo include collaborative work, combining my felting with the woodwork of my partner, Christian Burchard. Christian works wood when it is green, so changes in the form and surface of the material are created through drying it in different ways. We have found that our treatment of materials blends and enhances the two mediums, inviting viewers to consider how to preserve delicate ecosystems and how to hold them with reverence.