Fox Fridays: Feltmaking

Box in a Pocket, Bug in a Rug: Feltmaking is a marvelous malleable medium with infinite applications. In this two-day introductory workshop, you’ll learn three felting processes. You’ll make wet felt two ways—a solid form, and a flat sheet–with an optional pocket. And we’ll conclude with dry needle-felting; how else would you attach, for example, the legs of a woolly bug? You’ll also receive information about the material in the form of writings and links. Begin with curiosity about the power of interlocking fibers and finish with a box in a pocket, a bug in a rug, or other forms solid and flat of your own imagining.

Feltmaking is wet and soapy; please wear clothes and shoes you don’t mind getting cleaner. You’ll use clean, combed sheep’s wool fiber (dyed and undyed) and unscented pure-castile soap. The use of felting needles is optional. Non-latex kitchen gloves to insulate against hot water will be provided.

Takeaways: Two wool felt objects: a solid form and a flat sheet, with an optional pocket, using three feltmaking techniques, spanning wet and dry felting.

Instructor: Hope Ginsburg is an interdisciplinary, project-based artist who has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as MoMA PS1, MASS MoCA, Wexner Center for the Arts, USF Contemporary Art Museum, Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU, Baltimore Museum of Art, SculptureCenter, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Contemporary Art Center Vilnius and the Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Her work has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Women & Philanthropy at The Ohio State University. She is the recipient of a Wexner Center for the Arts Artist Residency Award, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship, and Art Matters Foundation Grant. Ginsburg has attended residencies such as the Robert Rauschenberg Residency, Skowhegan, the Wexner Center Film/Video Studio, and The Harbor at Beta-Local. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Hyperallergic, Artforum, and The Wall Street Journal. Ginsburg holds a Master of Science in Visual Studies from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Tyler School of Art. She is a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts and lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.