Did you know you can ‘paint’ with wool fibres to create beautiful designs and artworks? This week talented Exmouth artist Anna FitzGerald and I helped guide a group of felters to create felt landscape lampshades, first designing painterly pieces of felt and then turning these into lampshades. ‘Painting’ with fibres is not dissimilar to working with watercolours, and Anna and I were on hand to help our ‘painters’ convert their original design inspiration of a photograph or image into a picture made of Merino wool fleece fibres. We then helped everyone to wet-felt these and turn them into lampshades.
As you can see above, the results were pretty stunning, and even better once the lampshades were lit and you could see the crimp of the fibres shining through (which even changed the whole look of the colours in some cases). One of our lovely felters, Karen, has allowed me to share a few of her photos here, from design inspiration to finished lampshade in situ in her home, which really helps show the design process. Lampshades are a perfect way of showcasing a small artpiece like this, as well as being a practical use of a piece of felt. Anna and I are running more workshops to create Felt Landscape Lampshades, so please get in touch (email parminterart@gmail.com) if you’d like to join us to create your own felt masterpiece (also view Parminter Art on Facebook)!
