Taos Wool Festival

I actually got to take a four day vacation and attend the Taos Wool Festival the first weekend in October. This is an annual outdoor event in Kit Carson park in Taos, NM. My friend Shirley and I left around 6:30am on a Friday morning and arrived in Santa Fe around 2:30pm where we had a bite to eat, visited the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and 3 or 4 galleries in the plaza area before heading up to Taos. It's a beautiful drive through the mountains between Santa Fe and Taos. Saturday was a gorgeous day and we spent all morning walking through the tents at the Wool Festival fondling all kinds of wool products and spending money! I bought a beautiful felted purse, a wool batt, a couple of bumps, various wool rovings, curls and Lincoln Locks to name a few items. Shirley and I had a great time and both came home very inspired by all the art we had seen in the numerous galleries. We are looking forward to a return trip next year only we need a whole week! I'll post some pictures from the trip tomorrow.

More Experimenting

This is a photo my current Embellisher experiment. The solid red fabric in the background is pre-felted fabric from FiberFusion. The oriental fabric on the left was placed face down on the red felting fabric and then needled punched with the Embellisher. This created all the texture that you see on the piece in the fore ground. The felting needles pushed the front side of the fabric into the pre-felt fabric and created loops of threads. Since I was felting from the back side of the cotton fabric and the single thin layer of pre-felt fabric was on the front side you can slightly see the pattern of the fabric through the pre-felt. I love all the texture it created and can't wait to use this technique in my next creation!

End of Temporal Works

My exhibit at the Metcalfe Museum in Durham, Oklahoma ended August 31th. "Time Worn" (9" x 14") is the only piece that sold. It was purchased by Lynn Deal, the art director, and even though it is one of my favorite pieces I know it has a good home now.

The FAD Group is planning to have a group exhibit in the fall of 2009 at the Metcalfe Museum. That should give the group enough time to have new pieces to exhibit!

Another Place In Time

"Another Place In Time" is my latest felted piece that has been sewn to a painted canvas and framed. The frame isn't pictured but it's a plain contempory black frame. I painted black stitch marks on the canvas to correspond with the stitching on the felted piece. It has been wet felted, needle felted, and machine needled felted then hand embroidered and beaded. It's made from a merino wool batt, merino felting fabric, and wool roving.

I really like this piece. I don't make decorative items so most of my wall hangings don't match my decor but I actually think this will look nice in my living area (if we ever get finished with the remodel!).

I'm sorry, I still haven't figured out how to arrange photos in Blogger. Maybe one of these days I will learn how.

Inspired by Kandinsky

I've been busy working and haven't updated by blog lately. I'm currently finishing up two new felted pieces. I was going to name this piece "In Kandinsky Time" but now I'm having second thoughts. It was inspired by a Kandinsky painting and he was also a musician so the 'time' alludes to his musical abilities.

The background is made from Harrisville carded wool and Felting Fabric. I machine needle felted the background then lightly needle felted pieces of the felting fabric before wet felting the entire piece. After I completed the felting I added hand embroidery, silk roving, and beads. I'm in the process of sewing this to a canvas that I painted with acrylic paint.

Photos of Fiberworks 07 at IAO

Fiberworks 2007 exhibit is now showing at the IAO Gallery until June 30th. They have some photos of the exhibit on their website. I don't know why but they chose to show a close up of my Time in Space so I'm honored. http://www.iaogallery.org/htmlpages/events/fiberworks07.htm

Felted Nuno Scarf

Here is the felted nuno scarf that I made in Lynn Craigie's class at Studio Mid Del. Lynn is a great teacher and it was a fun class.

This is all wet felted and was not machine needle felted. It is very thin and light weight. It has a layer of black cheese cloth sandwiched between layers of merino wool roving. The back side is black and the front was a mixture of black and gray roving with added strands of gray silk noile covered with purple roving.

Fiberworks 2007

We had the opening reception for Fiberworks 2007 on June 2nd. Heather Winslow was the juror and she did an excellent job. Here is a photo of Heather on the left and Karen Collier on the right, who is the president of Fiber Artists of Oklahoma. FAO sponsor's the show and Karen presented the $3900 of awards to several artists.

I entered three pieces, had two accepted, and won a General Award of Merit ($250) for Time In Space. It's an excellent exhibit and will be on display at the IAO Gallery in OKC until June 30th. Time Marches On is the other piece that was accepted but I haven't taken a photo of it yet. A friend took this photo of Time in Space and sent it to me, thank you Shirley!

Metcalfe Museum Gallery Talk

I was invited to show my work at the Metcalfe Museum in Durham, Okla. this summer. I have 18 pieces that will be on display from June 9 to August 30. The opening reception was yesterday and I had to give a gallery talk. Now let me tell you, I have a terrible fear of speaking in public so this was not an easy task for me but I survived. The people in attendance seemed very interested in my work and asked very good questions. It was a pleasure to see all my work on display in a gallery.

The Metcalfe Museum was built around 2002 so it is a new facility and it was built to house Augusta Metcalfe's art work. You can read about the gallery on their website at http://www.metcalfemuseum.org/ and see Augusta's work.

Nuno Felting Sample

I took a class last night with Lynnie Craigie and this is the little sample of nuno felting that I made. I'm looking forward to the second half of the class next week when we will make a scarf.