Felting and Fiber Studio

The artist chosen by Ann for the 2nd Quarter Challenge as you all know by now is Stewart Stephenson. I had not discovered this artist before and he certainly has a wide array of styles although most are pretty abstract. It took me a while to find a piece that inspired me as I wanted to try some different screen printing techniques on felt in creating my challenge piece. Then “Barbarous Elly” caught my eye. I’m not sure about the name but I immediately thought of a way to recreate this piece with screen printing. Plus it had circles in it and since I just finished up a lot of circles work with my recent online class, it was appealing.

My original thought was to make a couple of book covers from the finished piece of felt. I’m not sure about that at this point though.

I laid out red-orange wool in a subtle gradation. I added blue silk noil to the surface.

This is the piece after felting. Can you see the gradation of color from left to right? Lighter orange to darker red-orange. I didn’t want a big change, just a slight one.

This is a little better color representation of the silk. It’s blue tending toward purple.

Then I silk screened a very dark blue-green dye on to the felt.

And here’s the finished piece. The dye changed the color of the silk noil so it stands out very nicely adding the blue-green color I wanted.

Here’s a closer view. I really like the result and like Zed and her challenge piece, I’m not sure I can cut it up. It may have to be a wall hanging. I have considered if I should add more to this piece, like stitching or even beading, but for now, I’m leaving it as is. It’s not quite as dramatic as the original painting but it will do. So now to come up with a name, what do you think?