Dyed-in-the-wool alum explains felt-making

After working with felt for 28 years, Sharron Parker, Woman's College '68, is still enamored with the diversity of the dually commonplace and unconventional material. She has traveled around the world to gain inspiration for her works, which are reflections of nature.

Before heading to France, Parker recently spoke with recess' Jessie Tang about the process of felt making, how she became acquainted with the medium and her future plans.

So how exactly do you make felt?

I start with unspun, dyed wool so it's in a loose fluffy form. I comb it with a device called a thread carder, which combs the wool and allows me to blend colors.

When you comb two parts together, it's like mixing two colors of paint together. I do the color blending with the thread carder, and then I put the sheet down and start building layers of the combed wool perpendicular to each other.

The three background layers of the solid color [are] equivalent to the canvas or the paper that other artists use.

Then I start doing all the shaded colors on the top layers, so I'll have two or three layers of the shades and textures that I want on top of the background. And then I put another sheet on top of all that to keep everything in place.

The whole thing goes in hot water. Then I start pressing rolling and unrolling a sandwich of two sheets, with six layers of wool in between. I'm pressing and rolling that until the layers shrink and lock together. Once that happens, I can remove the sheeting, and I continue to shrink it some more in the hot water.

Basically, I am relying on the natural quality of wool to shrink and lock in hot water. This is the oldest textile technique, dating back to the Stone Age.

Is that one of the reasons you decided to take up felt making?

I was a weaver and doing some other textile techniques, and then I saw these felts that were part of an archaeological dig in Siberia. I hadn't encountered hand-made felt before, so I got sort of interested in that. Now I've been doing it for 28 years.

How do you choose which locations to go to for inspiration?

[I choose] pretty much places that have a lot of natural beauty and architectural interest so I hike and bicycle. Also, I love castles. 10 artists [including myself] are renting a castle for $180 a person [when in France].

Why do you think felt works best for your pieces?

It's very organic. It's a natural material, and it can take all the forms of natural things: rocks, shells, wings. It captures all kinds of colors.

You can get all kinds of subtle color with wool because it dyes so well, and of course you can get any kind of texture and shape. It's just very open to different ways that I might want to work with.

A lot of what you deal with involves a do-it-yourself mentality.

I really do like the hands-on approach when you're working directly and immediately with the materials. It's very rewarding, so satisfying.

Many of your pieces deal with rocks, butterflies and fire. What themes are you planning on exploring next?

I want to work on a series on the castles. I'm looking at a lot of the Roman ruins and I want to do something inspired by Roman glass and Greek sculptures. I'll still work with color, and there will be a lot of tie-ins with what I'm doing now.

What do you want Duke students to get out of your current exhibit?

Just the knowledge that there are other art mediums in addition to the traditional ones, [and that they] offer lots more possibilities for them to work with or appreciate.

Selections of Sharron Parker's work are currently on display at the Louise Jones Brown Gallery in the Bryan Center until Sept. 17. See also recess' review of her show Handmade Felt at left.

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