news and events
This Saturday, April 27: Preview Reception for Open Studios
Join me in the Main Hallway to chat and mingle in anticipation of the upcoming Open Studios next month. You’ll get a preview of the artists who will present their work so you can plan your day accordingly! Saturday, April 27, 2-5pm, 1068 The Alameda.
Silicon Valley Open Studios (SVOS) is coming: May 18 & 19, 11am - 5pm
Get a peek inside artists’ studios to see what they’re working on and get the first chance at buying new work. My studio complex, The Alameda Artworks, will have 34 participating artists. My own space will be a little crazy and full of huge stitched sculptures-in-progress; come see the process for yourself! Find more information on the event including a map and list of participating artists here.
Coming in July to San Francisco: Fully Tactile art exhibition
My Hanging Pod sculptures will be featured in a project coming to San Francisco this summer for one week only. Fully Tactile Art Exhibition is a free public art exhibit inspired by people who are blind or have visual impairment, but it’s meant to be inclusively enjoyed and explored by all. This experience comes as a response to the reality that most art must being enjoyed through vision only. Here visitors will explore all the artworks through touch, and take part in the ongoing conversation of what it means to ‘see’ art.
July 24th - 28th, 2024, Wed-Friday 3-8pm, Sat & Sun 12-4pm
Jettison Creative: 47 Jeff Adachi Way, San Francisco, CA 94103
Artists include Sade Cole, Justin Kiene, Diane Komater, Stephanie Metz, Spike Milliken, and Susan Roemer.
Please Touch The Art
Three of my Hanging Pod sculptures have just returned from ‘Please Touch the Art’ at Reeves House Gallery. I’ve also written a new blog post about… writing about art.
new unnatural history specimen sculptures in my shop
I’ve recently completed some new small works. Take a look at the selection of teddy bear fetal specimens now in my shop.
Announcing two In-Person Sculptural Needle Felting Workshops Coming in Summer 2024:
Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts, Gatlinburg, TN: Sunday, May 26 - Friday, May 31 is SOLD OUT
Pacific Northwest Art School, Whidbey Island, WA: Friday, August 2 through Tuesday, August 6
Join me for in-person learning at fantastic venues. Think of this as sleep-away arts camp for grownups. Spend an intense and enjoyable week learning all I can unload from my brain about creating sculptural forms in felt. But hurry, classes fill up quickly.
Teddy Bear UnNatural History: Origin Story
I’ve started writing a blog about my unnatural history specimens over on my UnNatural Designs website featuring my more pop-culture-friendly work on tee shirts, photo prints, and stickers. Here’s the first entry, all about the origins behind teddy bear skulls made of felted wool.
Watch my Locals Interview on YouTube
I was featured on episode 3 of the ‘Locals’ series created by the Institute of Contemporary Art San Jose. Produced, directed and edited by Tachiya Bryant, with videography by Miguel Ozuna. Watch the video.
Introducing: UnNatural Designs
This is it: the official launch of my print-on-demand clothing store aimed at people who appreciate science + nature + art + weirdness.
This isn’t a change of direction as much as a parallel path- I’m still working in the studio on three-dimensional sculpture; I’m just letting myself play in two dimensions too.
I’m starting with designs featuring my teddy bear skulls as well as unicorn skeletons. Coming soon are shirts featuring pigeons vs doves, some fun with tardigrades, and other subjects that hit that sweet spot for me: inspired by nature, then filtered through my ‘unique’ brain.
OPen San Jose
I gave a free drop-in workshop as part of the festivities celebrating the grand opening of Open San Jose on June 10th. There was a lot of interest and a lot of stabbing at wool. If you missed and/or want a very accessible, beginner-friendly introduction to needle felting you can check out my upcoming class, below. Thanks to NorCal Public Media for inviting me (after their profile of me on their ‘Connect the Bay’ segment)!
Now closed: Hug a sculpture in vermont
Six of my Hanging Pod sculptures from my InTouch exhibition were selected to be part of Felt Experience at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center from June 18- October 10, 2022. A huge thanks to curators Sarah Freeman and Katherine Gass Stowe- so excited to have my sculpture presented alongside work by Marjolein Dallinga, Ruth Jeyaveeran, Melissa Joseph, and Liam Lee. Take the virtual tour, see installation photos, and read more here.
Six Hanging Pods Sculptures that will be on view at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center from July- October 2022.
Press coverage for Felt Experience
‘Felt Experience’ Offers Touchable Sculpture at Brattleboro Museum & Art Center
Blog post: Please Hold and Hug
I’m getting great feedback from the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center folks about visitors’ responses to Felt Experience. They just shared this lovely blog writeup with me, so I’m sharing it with you: read the Artful blog.
View a REcorded Artist Panel Discussion: Felt Experience
Co-Curator Sarah Freeman of the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center leads an online panel discussion with the artists featured in ‘Felt Experience’. View the recording on YouTube here.
Watch a 2 minute video on Bay Area Artist Stephanie Metz, who creates sculpture out of wool.
Connect the Bay: Stephanie Metz
If you’re flipping through television channels (ha!) in the California Bay Area you may see my familiar face in between programming. I was interviewed in my studio by Norcal Public Media, who put together a mini video; find it on KRCB TV Channel 22 in the North Bay (PBS) or KPJK TV Channel 60 in the South Bay. Or watch it here via Youtube!
Felting tools and examples laid out in preparation for the California Sculptors Symposium in-person workshop in Cambria, California, April 2022.
California Sculptors Symposium
This week-long sleep-away camp for sculptors has already occurred; check out my Facebook page for more photos: https://www.facebook.com/StephanieMetzSculpture
You can always learn from me at home via my online Sculptural Needle Felting video-based class: preview it here.
Watch me create a complete sculpture in 6 minutes…
with a little help from time lapse and editing. This sea turtle project encapsulates all the stages of sculptural needle felting: from poking wool into separate body parts, to adding color and detail, assembling the part together, and inserting a wire armature and wooden base. Enjoy!
Yuma Art Symposium presentation
This event has occurred, but you can read about it here on my blog.
Online art talks now booking
I’ve been invited to present Artist Talk slide lectures lately to various arts groups via Zoom. I love talking about InTouch and my journey through the challenges of making multiple, large-scale, labor-intensive touchable art with the help of volunteers, and the feedback I receive as a presenter is incredibly positive. Now I’ve also created and presented a kid-focused version in which I talk about sculpture, patterning, and my artwork with the assistance of images of my goofy dog, Splash. If you’re interested in having me speak to groups of kids or adults, contact me at stephanie(at)stephaniemetz.com for scheduling and rates.
"What a wonderful artist and presenter Stephanie is! She was very well received and feedback has been very positive! Love that the kids were so engaged that they did not want it to end." -Amy G., Elementary School Librarian, Los Gatos, CA
"You communicated so well, seemed so relaxed. And your work; I just wanted to reach out and touch it. Plus, insight about your problem creating and solving experience was a bonus and something that all of us can take as a personal lesson." -Rachelle W.
InTouch video experiences now live
Stephanie Metz: InTouch in its first incarnation delighted visitors of all ages with its tactile, interactive experiences during its run at the de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University. The planned 6-month-long debut of the exhibition was closed early due to campus-wide COVID-19 precautions and County Shelter In Place Orders— but before that happened there were lots of photos and videos captured. Now you can experience the exhibition from home:
Watch a documentary-style Artist Talk video for a behind-the-scenes look at eh making of InTouch artworks and their presentation at the museum.
Take a video tour through the Hanging Pods and the Holdables to get a visual sense of the experience.
Please visit youtube.com/c/StephanieMetzSculpture for a full line-up of videos. If you like what you see, please share them!
Shelter-In-Place Artmaking
In the California Bay Area we’ve been staying home and taking great care for over two months now— and I’ve been mostly working at my home studio since my kids were doing school-from-home and now summer break. What that means for my artmaking is three fold: first, I’m working much smaller than what I’ve been doing lately (huge InTouch sculptures); second, I’m using materials I have on hand already (wool, eggshells, and reclaimed wood); and three, my work is (of course) reflecting what’s going on in my life: feelings of breakability, uncertainty, fragility— but also the potential for change, new starts, resets. Thus the eggshells; previews below. To read more about this work please see my blog; I also post these pieces for sale in my shop as I complete them.
In the news:
InTouch received great write-ups by Gary Singh in the Metro and Sal Pizarro in the San Jose Mercury News.
Previously on view in San jose: Stephanie Metz: Figurative Fiber
The San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art presented a solo retrospective of Stephanie Metz’s sculpture. Stephanie Metz: Figurative Fiber ran from February 23 - June 9 2019. The exhibition, installed in the SJICA’s Off-Center Gallery, highlighted pieces spanning eight years from eight bodies of work including teddy bear skulls, porcupine-quill-studded creatures, clothing overtaken by hair, wool drawings, and Flesh and Bone sculptures.
Online shop:
Limited items are now available through my Shop. New catalogs, wool drawings, prints, and some small sculptures can be purchased online and shipped to you. International customers, please contact the artist directly at stephanie(at)stephaniemetz.com.
Previously on view in San Francisco
Jack Fischer Gallery presented Against the Grain, a two-person show featuring the work of Stephanie Metz and Kyong Ae Kim. The show ran through February 25, 2017.
Organic forms, unusual materials and process-oriented work create a dialog between the artists. Both undermine the structure of hardness by visually breaking it down in translucent layers or rendering it in soft materials. Hard versus soft, solid versus layered, strong yet delicate, both body of works contain opposing qualities creating an intrinsic contradiction that is visually engaging.
Stephanie Metz’s use of felted wool is an ongoing investigation into its potential for physical manipulation and conceptual redefinition. Her current body of work, Flesh & Bone, is a series of small studies and human sized sculptures that reference parts of the body, from soft weighty folds of flesh to the stripped down abstract architecture of bones.
Metz’s process is laborious and exacting: a slow, deliberate accumulation of fibers compacted into nearly solid and precise shapes through repetitive hand work with sharp, notched felting needles. Felt may be a ubiquitous material, yet few are familiar with its manufacture or its sculptural capacity.
Kyong Ae Kim’s recent work Paper Stroke and The Skulls directs us to study the symbiotic relationships of living creatures. While fragile and vulnerable they are constantly challenged by their surroundings to evolve and hybridize.
Kyong sculpts miniature figurines, which are photographed and digitally manipulated. Subsequently, the digital images are transformed into multiple layers to imply the time and evolutionary processes. Kyong’s latest work, The Skulls is sourced from photographs of endangered species such as the polar bear and elephant. The artist oscillates between the virtual and physical steps to amplify the images. These processes are vital to precisely eliminate, layer, simplify, and hybridize the forms to generate the complexity.
accolades
Stephanie was named a 2015 Artist Laureate by Silicon Valley Creates, the Santa Clara County nonprofit whose mission is to ignite investment and engagement in arts and creativity in Silicon Valley. Now in its 28th year, the Artist Laureate Program awards grants to artists in honor of their creative work and contribution to the community.