Stitched Industrial Felt Fiber Wall Art: The End of the Grey Curve Composition Series

When it comes to creating sculpture- heck, all art- the materials one uses are obviously a huge part of the mix… along with the ideas and the work to actually change them into meaningful objects. And sometimes those materials guide you, inspire you… and limit you.

Which is a good thing. Speaking as an artist, it can be helpful to establish some parameters or rules for oneself, at least for a particular body of work. And currently I find myself at the close of this particular grouping of pieces due to the fact that I have run out of the materials that unite them: the very particular batch of grey industrial felt that I’ve been using to create my Curve Compositions up to this point.

As a quick recap, I originally saw industrial felt as a means to an end, the material that could be used under/inside needle felted wool sculptures as an armature, or a supportive form. I would stitch ‘skins’ to form the shape I wanted, stuff them, and then needle felt over and into those forms in order to create larger felt sculptures.

And then I realized how much I like the material itself, and I used it to make Holdable sculptures as part of my hands-on/touchable InTouch body of work, that the public could move, wear, and manipulate in a museum setting for an interactive experience.

As I figured out how to make flat sheets of felt into three-dimensional forms through patterning, I also noticed how much this particular thick felt— almost half an inch thick— could hold its shape when stitched, more like slabs of clay than thin fabric. And that led to the Curve Compositions.

‘Cresting’, one of the final three Curve Composition wall sculptures. Its name comes from the way it looks like waves meeting and forming peaks.

These hand-stitched wall sculptures are subtle, organic, abstract, and orderly experiments to see what elegant forms I could create by joining simple, humble felt pieces together in different compositions. They have no stuffing although some appear quite solid— from behind you can see they are self-supporting, and presented on deep wooden stretcher bars.

‘Cresting’ as a work-in-progress: composing the planes and curves by cutting and stitching.

And now, with fifteen pieces created (seven have found homes with collectors as of this writing), I have come to the end of the series. But, you may ask, can’t you just buy more of the same felt and make more? Nope. Well, not exactly. Industrial felt like this isn’t made for its looks, but rather for its function. The manufacturer guarantees the thickness and density and that a certain percent will be wool versus other recycled fibers, but there are no promises about color. So, while the product would be quite similar, the pieces would not appear to be part of the same series. They wouldn’t play together as nicely as these ones, pictured on the wall of a collector:

And that doesn’t bother me. Trust me when I write that I have plans for more along these lines; in particular I’ve secured some ‘design felt— smoother, thinner, more evenly toned than this— for more fiber wall sculpture experiments. More to come on that. And if you want to read more about the Curve Compositions, check out this post. And of course if you want to buy some, you can find them here.

‘Undulate’, the final Curve Composition I created out of this batch of grey industrial felt, shows its subtle curves leading down to a hole that reveals the wall behind it.

What does it MEAN? Stitched Industrial Felt Wall Sculptures

I recently (finally) posted images of some new pieces I’ve been working on over the last year and a half, in between other smaller projects (eggshell wall sculptures), and longer-term projects (my video workshop). These ones are stitched industrial felt panels in which I’ve cut and stitched together ostensibly flat felt pieces to create forms that push out into three dimensions. The dark grey industrial felt is hand-sewn using suture-like black waxed linen thread; to give them the depth they need (some of the forms project back inwards) I mounted them over deep stretcher bars. Light barely reflects off the fibrous textured surfaces; when hanging on the wall as designed the range from dark to light across each piece is subtle and changes with the ambient light. Curves abound, both in the outlines of the pieces joined together and the resulting forms. These sculptures have lived quietly in the background of my studio over the months as I’ve gradually added to their number, often in a brief flurry of activity. They’ve been fairly private until now.

I hung them in a line in the hallway outside my studio in anticipation of finally opening up to invite visitors into the space once again. Somehow, hanging them together against a clean white wall finally made them look complete. What seemed too subtle now appears sublime and sure.

My relationship with the things I make goes through different phases, especially when I’m reaching in different directions than before. These wall panel pieces have been unnamed as a group or individually thus far; the making has been the focus for me, not the naming and presenting and reception. Today, though, someone asked me ‘What do you want these artworks to say?” and it set me back. I can sometimes forget that there are starkly different realities coexisting when it comes to artmaking and art consuming. I’m so deeply engaged in the making side of it, and in my practice I generally don’t go into it with a message I’m seeking to convey. I don’t need the artworks to say anything; they are more like the tangible, visible, tactile results of investigation and play. I don’t have a roadmap I’m following to get to a particular destination; I’m paying attention on the journey and I am willing to go down side roads that seem promising.

And then I’m reminded that it’s part of my job to help people make sense of what they’re seeing, give them an entry point, an answer to the ‘why,’ a meaning. We humans are hungry for meaning, and we’re willing to make it up if there’s an absence of it. But meaning differs from person to person, and that’s one thing I value about the abstract nature of the forms I create. My panel sculptures don’t present a narrative. The viewer comes to them from their own lifetime of experiences and sees and feels things (or doesn’t ) as a result.

From my end of the experience I can say that I've been challenging myself to work out the puzzles of how to make flat felt move into three dimensions, and found that it's entirely dependent on the edges that are joined together- how, where, at what angle and curve. It feels like an intellectual, physical, and creative triumph to make the humble, coarse industrial felt pieces come together to occasionally 'sing.' The search, the process, the making is endlessly engaging for me, and sometimes it results in forms that please me in the simple fact of their physical existence.

Viewers whose sensibilities resonate with mine tend to use words like ‘sensuous,’ ‘comforting,’ ‘satisfying,’ ‘beautiful,’ ‘body-like,’ ‘mysterious,’ and ‘mesmerizing.’ Others label them as ‘disturbing,’ ‘physical,’ ‘raw,’ ‘powerful',’ and ‘visceral.’ Which also resonate with me. Which is a long-winded way for me to explain that I don’t have something I want these artworks to say, but I know what I needed them to be in the world when I made them and now: solid, elegant and sturdy in defiance of their humble materiality; disarmingly simple, as complex forms so often are.

I keep coming back to curves: the ‘flat’ curves that make the ‘dimensional’ curves possible and visible. The curved lines I’ve cut into flat pieces of felt and stitched together fundamentally change the appearance and the behavior of the material. ‘Curve Compositions’ seem like an apt way to pin down the body of work, since I have to call them something. ‘Curve Compositions’ acknowledges my experience as the maker and gives the viewer an entry point; the word ‘curves’ fits both the physical and conceptual forms. Looking at them now, I respond with simple satisfaction to their sinuous planes on one level, but also appreciate the evidence of what brought about those shapes— the stitched seams suggest some of the thinking and intention behind the finished work. What do you get out of these? See more images here.

Explaining Myself... how I create patterns for 3D shapes using felt and styrofoam

As an artist I've always been intrigued to learn HOW other people make and do things, so of course I assume there are others like me out there. As I create this new body of work for my InTouch project I'm trying a lot of new processes (or at least scaling up and increasing quantities of known processes) and I want to share some behind-the-scenes parts of that so people can better understand what I'm doing, and perhaps why. To that end I decided to film some short bits here and there to explain what I'm doing, and this marks the first installment. This first video shows a little about the way I am figuring out patterns: starting with a model so I can determine the flat shapes that go together to cover that model in a 'skin'. If you want to see past videos and sign up to get notifications about new ones as I create them, go to my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/StephanieMetzSculpture 

The felt pattern I created over an enlarged foam model; the small clay form on the right was a guide for carving the foam. Note the marks across the pieces so I can realign them later. 

The flattened-out pattern pieces once they have been removed from the foam model.