Collaborative project in progress
Painting of Audrey Lourde by Lucy Mahler, and felt interpretation as it is being prepared for felting.
My friend Lucy Mahler was working on a group project Women's History Mural in Brooklyn, and she brought over a canvas sketch she made for her part of the mural. Different artists were asked to represent various women of note, and Lucy was contributing a portrait of Audrey Lourde. I looked at her painting, and immediately thought it would be an interesting exercise to try to interpret her work in felt.
Lucy, a good sport, agreed to the experiment. I took out bags of dyed, carded and uncarded wool, and set to work. I work in the bathtub, since feltmaking requires a lot of hot soapy water, and I don't have a large studio. I place a board over the tub, and use plastic screening to hold the unfelted wool together.
As I laid out the wool, Lucy watched. You can see that I exaggerated the colors in the face. I can't help but abstract things a bit.
Here is the face laid out before felting. See how that the unfelted colored wool looks so fluffy. In some areas, I had put colors on top of one another, in some I made discrete units of color. The question was, how will these areas of color fuse together during the felting process. Personally, I like to let some shifting of the colors happen during felting, and I enjoy the surprises.
Below is the face after it has gone through the first round of felting. The areas of color have been flattened, and the felting process has begun. The fluffiness of the pre-felted pieces is gone. I still am surprised at the subtle transformation of a piece when the fluffy unspun fibers first begin to fuse and form the felt.
