Lumber Room
Site specific permanent installation
Collaboration with Nicole Misiti, The Felt Hat, Portland, OR
27 panels 12’ x 4’
Private Residence, Pearl District, Portland OR
Listening and brainstorming is a dynamic and exciting process. I find collaborations one of the most inspiring parts of my art practice. Being able to bring to life a new texture, surface or textile that expresses the qualities, feeling and specifications a designer or architect is imagining has resulted in some amazing discoveries and results.
This collaboration with Nicole Misiti is another great example of how two creative minds with very different skill-sets can compliment and challenge each other through a collaborative spirit- and reach a remarkable result. This project came just as I finished collaborating on Grendel for the LA Opera. Nicole had a vision of lace-like window coverings – like the cellular patterns of wood – and was curious if something like that could be made in Felt. It was our first meeting and I thought it seemed impossible to tame the wildness of wool to replicate such a graphically delicate pattern. I said no, and suggested she perhaps should consider screen printing.
Fast forward a couple hours.
I’m driven by challenges and while such a complex and delicate pattern had never been accomplished in Felt before, it seemed like a perfect time to try! I turned it into a 2 year personally funded design challenge. After more than a month of trial and error, I had a small sample that showed promise, and Nicole agreed I was on the right track. Continuing my development and refinement over the next year, I ended up inventing a proprietary technique – which I call Felt Silhouette™.
I can, with remarkable precision and dependability, replicate almost any graphic pattern into handmade Felt. The Lumber Room Art Sheers are the result of this discovery. Through a process I developed that is laborious and time-consuming, I was able to infuse the macro landscape view of a wood cell to become the Lumber Room Art Sheers. I’m grateful for the challenge and collaboration with Nicole’s project, and my ability to understand the voice of the wool fibers, allowing me to accomplish these iconic and beautifully refined pieces of textile art.
