Wet Felting at Olive Rush Studio: A Vessel for Creativity, Community & Connection

Felt with us: holding creativity, community and connection

There is something special about making art in a place where another artist once lived and worked.

On Saturday, October 3, I’ll be teaching a wet-felting workshop at the Olive Rush Historic Artist Home & Garden at 630 Canyon Road in Santa Fe. For three hours, we’ll gather with wool, plant fibers, warm water, soap, and our hands to experience the transformation of loose fibers into sculptural felt.

But the place where we’ll be making feels just as important as what we’ll make.

An Artist’s Home as a Vessel

Wet felted wool vessel by fiber artist Andrea Dupree for Santa Fe felting workshop.

Painter Olive Rush moved to Santa Fe in 1920, at age 47, and purchased the adobe home at 630 Canyon Road from the Rodriguez-Seña family, who had farmed the property for more than 200 years.

Rush transformed the front room into her studio and created a life there centered around art, friendship, spirituality, and community. She added spaces that she often rented to other artists and established a garden beneath century-old apple trees, adding fruit trees, grapes, vegetables, shrubs, and flowers. Friends and neighbors gathered at her home for dinners, teas, parties, conversation, and creative exchange.

Rush was also part of Canyon Road at a remarkable moment in its history. When she purchased her home in 1920, she was among the street’s early artists. As more artists and creative people arrived, her house and garden became a gathering place within this developing artistic community.

Today, the home still contains traces of her creative life: her studio, paintings, frescos and painted decorations, furniture, brushes and art materials, along with the garden that was so important to her. The nonprofit that now cares for the property is intentionally returning it to its historic role as a place for art, community, and creative exploration.

That history inspired the theme of our workshop: the vessel as a container for creativity, community, and connection.

What Can a Vessel Hold?

A vessel can hold something physical—flowers, stones, seeds, treasured objects, or things gathered from the landscape.

But I’m also interested in what a vessel can hold metaphorically.

A home can be a vessel.
A garden can be a vessel.
A studio can be a vessel.
Our hands can hold knowledge and memory.
A gathering of people can create a temporary container for conversation, experimentation, and connection.

During our afternoon together, each participant will create a vessel of their own.

We’ll begin with loose wool and plant fibers and slowly build layers around a resist. With warm water, soap, movement, pressure, and patience, those individual fibers begin to entangle and strengthen until they become a seamless three-dimensional form.

It’s one of the things I love most about wet felting: you participate in the transformation, but you don’t completely control it.

The material responds.

Felting as a Mindful Creative Practice

My workshops combine technical fiber-art instruction with mindfulness, curiosity, and material exploration.

Wet felting is particularly suited to this approach because it is such a physical and sensory process. You feel the temperature of the water, the softness of loose wool, the resistance gradually developing beneath your hands, and eventually the moment when something that began as fragile fiber becomes strong enough to hold its own form.

There is repetition. There is movement. There are moments that require concentration and others when your hands can simply work.

I’ll guide participants through the entire process, from laying out fibers to shaping and finishing a three-dimensional vessel, while also encouraging everyone to experiment and respond to their materials.

You don’t need to have felted before.

You don’t even need to think of yourself as an artist.

Beginners and experienced makers are equally welcome.

Finding Inspiration in an Artist’s Home

I find historic artists’ homes particularly inspiring because they allow us to encounter artists differently than we do in museums.

Instead of seeing only a finished painting or sculpture, we can spend time within the environments where creative lives actually unfolded.

There are worktables and windows. Gardens and kitchens. Collections of objects. Half-practical decisions about where to put supplies. Places where someone sat, thought, experimented, entertained friends, looked outside, abandoned ideas, and began again.

At Olive Rush’s home, visitors can still see her painting corner beside a north-facing window, her easel and brushes, painted cabinets, pottery, textiles, frescos, garden furniture, and the spaces where art and everyday life overlapped.

Spending time in places like this reminds me that an artistic practice isn’t only the work that eventually hangs on a wall.

It is also a way of inhabiting a place.

And sometimes stepping into another artist’s environment can shake something loose in our own thinking. We notice a color combination, a garden path, an old tool, the quality of afternoon light through a window—or simply the evidence of another person having built a creative life there.

That can be enough to make us want to make something ourselves.

Artists as Spiritual Adventurers

In 1925, Olive Rush wrote:

“Artists are spiritual adventurers, and the strange beauty of the Southwest invites us to dare all things.”

Nearly a century later, her home is once again becoming a place where contemporary and historic stories meet and where art is not only displayed, but taught and practiced.

I love the word dare in Rush’s statement.

Making doesn’t always require a grand gesture. Sometimes daring can simply mean working with a material you’ve never touched before. Letting go of what you think the finished piece should look like. Following an unexpected texture. Slowing down enough to notice what your hands are doing.

On October 3, we’ll spend an afternoon doing exactly that.

We’ll make with wool, water, and our hands in a home and garden that have held more than a century of art, friendship, contemplation, and creative exchange.

And we’ll each leave carrying a vessel of our own.

Join Me at Olive Rush

Wet-Felted Vessels: Holding Creativity, Community & Connection
Saturday, October 3 | 1–4 pm
Olive Rush Historic Artist Home & Garden
630 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico

All materials are provided, and no previous felting experience is necessary. Beginners and experienced makers are warmly welcome.

Come spend an afternoon slowing down, learning the transformative process of wet felting, and making something entirely your own in one of Santa Fe’s incredible historic artist homes.

Space is limited. Register here.

Felting, Found Objects, and Internal Validation

How a therapy conversation became fiber art…

detail

One of the unexpected joys of working with felt, found objects, and reclaimed materials is that they often begin speaking long before I know what they want to become. A rusted piece of metal, a discarded trophy or a tuft of wool carries traces of previous lives. Through needle felting, wet felting and assemblage, I become less interested in restoring these objects than in transforming their stories.

Several works in my Curious Maximalist exhibition at Little Bites Gallery in Santa Fe grew from this process of gathering overlooked objects and allowing them to evolve through making.

Among them is a small series built around vintage trophies.

The Story Behind the Trophies

The idea emerged during a conversation with my therapist about internal versus external validation. We talked about how easily I can become trapped by external measures of success…a gallery acceptance, an award, positive feedback, a social media post that performs well, a new opportunity.

She reminded me that nearly all of us have been conditioned to seek external validation from childhood onward.

Gold stars.
Grades.
Trophies.
“Good job!”
Acceptance letters.
Promotions.
Likes.
Awards.

These things aren’t inherently bad. They are part of life, and they can be deeply meaningful. But when they become the only way we measure our worth, we give away something important.

What if our internal voice celebrated us with equal enthusiasm?

That question stayed with me long after our conversation ended.

Working with Found Objects

I love searching family collections, thrift stores, estate sales, eBay, and flea markets for materials. I’m drawn to objects that have already lived a life before finding mine.

Vintage trophies immediately captured my attention because they represent achievement—but only one kind of achievement.

By combining these found objects with hand-felted wool, vintage findings, reclaimed textiles, and hand stitching, I wanted to shift their meaning. Instead of celebrating public accomplishments, these sculptures recognize quieter victories that rarely receive applause.

Holding boundaries.

Making it through grief.

Continuing to create despite doubt.

Resting when rest is needed.

Showing up again after disappointment.

These are victories too.

Felting as a Practice of Transformation

Felting has always felt like the perfect medium for these ideas.

Unlike many sculptural materials, wool is remarkably forgiving. It can be built up, compressed, softened, pierced, stitched, reshaped, and repaired. Through repeated handling, loose fibers become something unexpectedly strong.

That transformation mirrors the emotional work these pieces reference.

Each sculpture combines wet-felted wool and found objects to create forms that balance softness with permanence. The contrast between warm, tactile fiber and cold manufactured objects creates a dialogue between vulnerability and achievement, process and outcome, internal experience and public recognition.

Curiousity as Maximalism as Curiosity

Throughout the Curious Maximalist exhibition, I invite visitors to notice the relationships between materials and concepts.

The exhibition includes felted wall sculptures, fiber assemblages, wearable works, and found-object sculptures, each built through layering, collecting, and intuitive composition. Many incorporate reclaimed materials gathered throughout Northern New Mexico alongside inherited objects and vintage curiosities.

Although the materials vary, they ask similar questions:

  • What do we choose to carry?
  • What deserves preserving?
  • What stories can ordinary objects continue telling?
  • What if our smallest personal victories were worthy of celebration?

An Award Worth Giving

This particular trophy became my own award for simply holding it together during difficult seasons.

Not because everything went perfectly.

Not because every application was accepted.

Not because every goal was reached.

But because I kept going.

If you’ve been carrying invisible weight, navigating uncertainty, caring for others, rebuilding after loss, or quietly doing the work no one else sees, perhaps you deserve an award too.

Maybe the most meaningful recognition isn’t the one someone else hands us.

Maybe it’s the one we finally learn to give ourselves.

Visit Curious Maximalist

Curious Maximalist is a solo exhibition of hand-felted sculpture, found-object assemblage, and fiber art exploring transformation, memory, curiosity, and ecological making. The exhibition is on view at Little Bites Gallery 805 Early Street in Santa Fe.

If you’re in Northern New Mexico, I hope you’ll stop by, spend time with the work, and perhaps discover a few unexpected treasures of your own.

Behind Curious Maximalist: the Art of Transformation and Balance

Preparing for Curious Maximalist

As I prepare for my upcoming solo exhibition, Curious Maximalist at Little Bites Gallery in Santa Fe, I keep returning to the idea of balance. My studio practice moves between different ways of making, each with its own visual language, materials, and questions. This exhibition brings some of these things together, offering a glimpse into the conversations that happen behind the scenes in my studio.

My studio practice moves between very different ways of making. Some work begins with the land, local materials, and questions about labor, ecology, and place. Other work is more personal, colorful, symbolic, and inward-looking. Then there are the small assemblages, which allow me to be playful, intuitive, and responsive to the objects I have gathered over many years.

Rather than trying to make all of these parts of my practice look the same, Curious Maximalist gives me space to let them speak to one another.

Balancing Form, Color, and Concept

I think carefully about both what a work means and how it appears in space. Concept matters deeply to me, but so do form, color, texture, scale, and visual presence. Sometimes a piece asks to be quiet and restrained. Sometimes it needs saturated color, ornament, humor, or excess.

In my ongoing project Gathered & Felt, which is inspired by the land and sheep ranching traditions of Northern New Mexico, I am working primarily with neutral tones, local wool, plant fibers, and found ranching materials (lots of rusted metal and old hay bale ropes). The palette reflects the landscape and the materials themselves. That work is large in scale and grounded in questions about labor, ecological memory, repair, and the relationships between people, animals, and place.

Nigrado Series: hand-felted wool, ramie, flax, silk (20″ round x 4″ deep)

The works in my Nigredo series come from a more personal place. These sculptural felt wall pieces use stronger colors and more intimate symbolism. The series is named for the alchemical stage associated with dissolution, darkness, and transformation. For me, these works hold inner landscapes shaped by memory, uncertainty, grief, change, and shadow work.

img_0694

The assemblages in Curious Maximalist create another kind of balance. They are smaller, more playful, and densely layered with color, texture, and collected materials. They bring together felt, vintage textiles, inherited objects, childhood artifacts, thrift-store finds, estate-sale discoveries, and small curiosities gathered from roadsides and other unexpected places.

These works may be intimate in scale, but they are not minor. They allow me to work quickly and intuitively while still paying close attention to composition, craftsmanship, and meaning. They also offer a more accessible way for people to collect original work from the exhibition.

Collecting as Part of the Art Process

Collecting has always been part of how I understand the world.

I am drawn to objects that show evidence of previous lives: a worn piece of fabric, a tiny charm, a fragment of trim, a faded plastic toy, a seed pod or something found on the side of the road. I rarely see these things as finished objects. I see them as materials with open possibilities.

Sometimes I clean, stitch, wrap, paint, cut, felt around, or otherwise alter what I collect. At other times, the most important decision is to leave an object nearly unchanged and place it beside something unexpected. The meaning comes through the relationship between materials.

This process is less about preserving objects exactly as they were and more about asking what else they might become.

Growing up in South Louisiana, I was surrounded by the visual traditions of Catholicism and Mardi Gras. Altars, costumes, handmade adornments, sacred objects, beads, metallic fabrics, floral decorations, and treasured keepsakes were all woven into everyday life. Those influences continue to appear in my work, often in the form of contemporary reliquaries, wearable talismans, shrine-like arrangements, and curiosity collections.

Wool, Water, and Transformation

Wool remains central to the exhibition because it is such a transformative material.

Through wet and needle felting, loose fibers become dense, durable forms. The process is physical and repetitive. It involves layering, rubbing, rolling, shaping, waiting, and responding to what the material is doing.

I use harvested rainwater for much of my felting process. When the work is finished, I reuse the leftover water in my garden. This is a practical choice, but it is also connected to how I think about making. I want the process to remain part of a larger cycle of care rather than feeling separate from the landscape around my studio.

I do not try to control every stage of the process. Wool shrinks, shifts, folds, and thickens in ways that cannot always be fully predicted. Found materials bring their own limitations and histories. I work collaboratively with those qualities, allowing the final form to emerge through a conversation between intention and response.

An Opening Reception with Interactive Elements

I am especially excited about the opening reception because I do not want visitors to feel that they are only there to look at finished objects.

The opening will include invitations to make, collect, play, and become part of the exhibition experience. I am thinking of the atmosphere as a little like an imaginative 1980s school bazaar, with art-making stations, mystery grab bags, tiny art, and vintage ephemera.

Visitors will be able to play the art and vintage ephemera grab bag game, create something of their own, and, weather permitting, join together under a giant P.E. parachute.

The parachute is intentionally playful and communal. It asks people to move together, pay attention to one another, and participate in a temporary shared form. In a way, it reflects many of the same ideas that appear in the artwork: interconnectedness, transformation, memory, cooperation, and the pleasure of handling materials.

I want the opening to feel generous, curious, and welcoming to people of all ages. It is not only a reception for viewing art. It is an invitation to enter the world of the exhibition through movement, making, collecting, and play.

About the Exhibition

Curious Maximalist brings together new works from my Nigredo series of sculptural felt wall pieces alongside small-scale assemblages made from felt, vintage textiles, and collected curiosities.

Across both bodies of work, I am thinking about how people, materials, memories, and objects change over time. I am interested in what happens when ordinary or overlooked things are given sustained attention, and how slow making can transform them into objects of reflection, humor, tenderness, and care.

Curious Maximalist opens Friday, August 21, 2026, from 6:00–8:00 pm at Little Bites Gallery, 805 A Early Street in Santa Fe. The exhibition remains on view through September 20, with gallery hours Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4:00 pm.

Admission is free, and guests of all ages are welcome.

Curious Maximalist Exhibition at Little Bites Gallery flier

Curious Botanicals: Hand-Felted Wearable Art Inspired by Nature

Curious Botanicals, Curious Maximalist, and the Joy of Wearing Art

Some artworks are meant to live on a wall. Others are meant to travel with us.

Over the past few months, alongside creating larger felt sculptures for upcoming exhibitions, I’ve found myself returning again and again to smaller forms. Hand-felted flowers, brooches, and wearable sculptures have become a way to explore many of the same ideas that appear throughout my studio practice: interconnectedness, curiosity, and our relationship with the natural world.

Each piece begins with loose wool fibers that are transformed through slow, tactile processes of wet felting, needle felting, and hand stitching. Layer by layer, soft fibers become sturdy sculptural forms. No molds, patterns, or shortcuts. Every piece develops its own character as I respond to the materials in front of me.

My Curious Botanicals collection is inspired by seed pods, blossoms, lichens, and the quiet architecture of plants. They’re designed to be worn as brooches or hair clips, inviting people to carry a small piece of fiber art into everyday life.

The Curious Maximalist collection explores a different side of my practice. Influenced by the joyful adornment of Mardi Gras, psychedelic color, vintage treasure hunting, and botanical forms, these wearable sculptures celebrate curiosity, playfulness, and the stories we choose to carry on our bodies. They sit somewhere between jewelry, sculpture, and tiny companions.

I love creating large installations, but there’s something especially meaningful about wearable art. A brooch becomes part of someone’s day. It travels, sparks conversations, and gathers its own memories long after it leaves the studio.

This weekend, people in Santa Fe will have two opportunities to experience these collections in person.

On Saturday, July 11, I’ll be celebrating the second anniversary of Collect Santa Fe with a selection of Curious Botanicals wearable flowers. The following day, Sunday, July 12, I’ll be participating in Mottainai Santa Fe’s second anniversary celebration with works from my Curious Maximalist collection, alongside local artists, vintage sellers, musicians, and food vendors.

If you’re nearby, I’d love to meet you.

If you’re reading from somewhere else, know that these events are part of a much larger season in the studio. I’ll be sharing new wearable works throughout the summer as I continue preparing for my upcoming solo exhibition, Curious Maximalist, opening this August at Little Bites Gallery in Santa Fe.

Whether we meet at a pop-up, through an exhibition, or here online, thank you for following along as these curious objects continue to find their way into the world.

Needle Felting Workshop at Meow Wolf Santa Fe | Andrea Dupree | Curious Bluebird

If you’re looking for a needle felting workshop in Santa Fe, join me on Saturday September 19th at Meow Wolf Santa Fe for an afternoon of creativity, curiosity, and making. In this beginner-friendly workshop, we’ll transform colorful wool into imaginative soft sculptures inspired by the surprising beauty of the natural world.

Needle Felting in Santa Fe: Finding Inspiration in Nature

When I begin making a new creature, I rarely start with a sketch. Instead, I spend time observing the world around me. The surreal landscapes of Fantastic Planet, the intricate patterns revealed through macro photography, and the remarkable forms of flowers, insects, fungi, coral, and seed pods all find their way into my work.

a close up shot of a crawling snail
Photo by Egor Kamelev on Pexels.com

The closer we look, the stranger nature becomes. Tiny organisms resemble distant galaxies. Blossoms look like underwater creatures. Mosses, lichens, and mushrooms seem as though they belong on another planet.

Nature has always been the greatest science fiction writer.

What You’ll Create During This Needle Felting Workshop

During this three-hour needle felting workshop at Meow Wolf Santa Fe, you’ll learn the fundamentals of sculptural needle felting while creating your own Strange Soft Companion.

We’ll explore how to build forms with wool, shape expressive features, layer color, and add personality through texture and detail. No prior felting experience is necessary. Whether you’re an experienced maker or trying fiber art for the first time, you’ll leave with new skills and a one-of-a-kind sculpture.

Why I Love Needle Felting

Needle felting invites collaboration with the material itself. Wool has a way of suggesting unexpected directions. A lopsided ear, oversized eyes, or an unusual texture often become the qualities that make a piece feel alive.

Rather than striving for perfection, we’ll follow curiosity. The goal isn’t to recreate something that already exists but to discover a companion that gradually emerges through the making process.

register here

Contemporary Fiber Art in Santa Fe: Exhibition, Workshop + Artist Talk

Bound by the High Desert: Contemporary Fiber Art, opening May 15, 2026, at El Zaguán

This May, I’m honored to be included in Bound by the High Desert: Contemporary Fiber Art at El Zaguán 545 Canyon Road, presented by Historic Santa Fe Foundation. The exhibition in Santa Fe brings together five New Mexico-based artists including myself, Benita Ortega-Rael, Nancy Kozikowski, Pando Speer, and Dain Daller, whose work reflects both deep-rooted traditions and contemporary approaches to fiber as a fine art medium.

Exhibition image from Historic Santa Fe Foundation

Set within the adobe walls of this historic space, the exhibition highlights how fiber practices continue to evolve while remaining grounded in place, material, and cultural memory. There is something especially meaningful about showing this work in a site where history is not abstract, it is physically present.

Exhibition Details

Opening Reception: Friday, May 15, 2026 | 5–7 PM
On View Through: June 20, 2026
Artist Talk: June 20 at 2 PM (free, registration required)

Interconnected Materials, Living Systems

My work in this exhibition continues an ongoing exploration of interconnectedness- between humans and the natural world, between materials and memory, between what is seen and what is felt.

Working primarily in wool, plant fibers, and stones, I create felted and embroidered forms that function as contemporary altars. These pieces emerge through slow, tactile processes including wet felting, needle felting and stitching. Through this work I’m collaborating with water, pressure, and time to transform raw fiber into structure. Many of the materials I use are gathered locally or sourced through reuse, carrying traces of place and human history.

Guided by animism and ecological attunement, I approach these materials as collaborators. The work becomes a site of relationship between body and place, between care and making. Within the context of this exhibition, I see these forms as part of a larger conversation about how traditional fiber practices continue to hold relevance today, not only as craft, but as a way of thinking, sensing, and connecting.

Artist Talk: Fiber as Continuity and Change

On Saturday, June 20 at 2 PM, I’ll be participating in an artist conversation moderated by Anne Kelly alongside Nancy Kozikowski, Pando Speer, and Dain Daller.

This conversation asks a simple but expansive question: What does it mean to create in fiber today?

We’ll be speaking about process, material knowledge, and the ways fiber practices carry both ancestral memory and contemporary experimentation. It’s a great opportunity to hear directly from artists working across different fiber traditions and approaches.

Workshop: Mindful Making – Wet-Felted Vessels

I’ll also be offering a hands-on workshop:

Mindful Making: Creating Wet-Felted Vessels
Saturday, May 23, 2026 | 1–4 PM

This workshop is rooted in both technique and presence. Participants will learn the fundamentals of wet felting while creating hollow wool vessels using water, natural soap, and fiber. We’ll begin with a short grounding practice to support attention and connection to the materials, then move into the physical process of shaping and forming.

Wet felting is an ancient practice that is simple, yet deeply transformative. My goal is to create a space where participants can engage both creatively and reflectively, leaving with a finished object and a deeper sense of connection to material and process.

No prior experience is needed, and all materials are provided.

Looking Forward

This exhibition feels like a meaningful convergence of place, material, and community. To be showing alongside artists who are deeply engaged with fiber traditions in New Mexico, and to share this work within a historic space dedicated to preservation and cultural continuity, feels both grounding and expansive.

If you’re in Santa Fe this spring, I’d love to see you at the opening, the artist talk, or in the workshop.

Create Nuno Felted Wearable Art with me on Zoom

Weaving Wool, Silk, and Spirit

There is a quiet kind of magic in the meeting of fibers. Wool and silk come together through water, soap, and steady movement to create a fabric that is both strong and fluid, structured and soft. In my upcoming Nuno Felted Wearable Art Workshop on May 2nd from 12-3p PT/ 1-4p MT/ 2-5pCST/ 3-6p ET on Zoom (sign up here), we’ll explore this process together through hands-on technique, mindful presence, and the shared experience of making wearable art.

What Is Nuno Felting? A Brief History

Nuno felting is a contemporary textile technique developed in the early 1990s by fiber artists such as Polly Stirling. The word nuno comes from the Japanese word for fabric, reflecting the method’s defining feature: combining fine wool fibers with lightweight, open-weave cloth, most often silk.

During the wet felting process, wool fibers migrate through the silk and bind to themselves on the other side, permanently fusing the two materials into a single cloth. The result is a fabric that is lighter and more flexible than traditional felt, with beautiful surface texture and movement. It drapes, stretches, and responds to the body, making it ideal for wearable pieces like cowls, scarves, and wraps.

nuno-felted wearable

Materials as Metaphor: Interconnectedness and Strength in Togetherness

One of the things I love most about nuno felting is how clearly it demonstrates that strength does not always come from thickness or density. It comes from relationship.

Wool is resilient and responsive. Silk is smooth, open, and luminous. On their own, each has beauty and purpose. When they are brought together through friction, warmth, and patience, they transform into something entirely new. The fibers lock into one another and create stability through interdependence.

This process offers a powerful metaphor for community and care. Just as fibers support one another across the weave of the silk, we rely on shared effort, trust, and connection to build strength in our own lives. In making together, we experience how individual contributions become part of a larger, more resilient whole.

Making as a Community of Care

In this workshop, we will approach nuno felting not only as a technical skill but also as a slow, sensory, and collaborative practice. We will begin with a brief grounding exercise to help everyone arrive fully and connect with the materials. From there, I will guide you step by step through layout, wetting, rolling, and shaping as your fabric transforms into a finished wearable piece.

This is a space where:

  • Curiosity is welcomed and perfection is not the goal
  • Each person can work at their own pace
  • Questions, experimentation, and conversation are part of the process

Whether you are new to fiber arts or have prior experience, you will leave with a one of a kind felted cowl or headwarmer and a deeper understanding of how simple materials can come together to create strength, beauty, and meaning.

Join me on May 2nd, 2026

If you are craving hands-on making, connection, and time to slow down with beautiful materials, I would love to have you join us.

Sign up for the May 2nd Zoom workshop via Española Valley Fiber Arts Center:
👉 HERE

Wet Felting Workshop in Taos, New Mexico

Mindful Making: Creating Wet Felted Vessels

Wet felting workshops offer a hands-on way to explore fiber art through slow, tactile making. In my recent Mindful Making: Creating Wet Felted Vessels workshop at Omnihum Gallery in Taos, participants gathered to learn the fundamentals of wet felting while engaging in a process that supports creativity, attention, and embodied awareness. The workshop combined fiber art techniques with a gentle, reflective approach to making.

What Participants Learn

Participants begin by learning the basic principles of wet felting, a traditional fiber technique that uses warm water, soap, and friction to interlock wool fibers into strong, sculptural forms.

During the workshop, participants explored:

  • how wool fibers shrink and bind during the felting process
  • layering and shaping wool around a resist to form a vessel
  • techniques for compressing, shaping, and strengthening felt
  • how slow handwork supports focus, creativity, and mindfulness

Each participant created a small felted vessel while learning techniques they can continue exploring at home. The workshop emphasized curiosity, experimentation, and the pleasure of working directly with natural materials.

Materials Used (Merino Wool, Silk, Plant Fibers)

The workshop used a selection of natural fibers that highlight the expressive qualities of felt.

Materials included:

  • Merino wool roving for its softness and ability to felt smoothly
  • Silk fibers to introduce subtle texture and luminosity
  • Plant fibers (flax, ramie & bamboo) that add structure and visual contrast within the felt surface

These materials allow participants to explore how different fibers behave during felting while creating richly textured vessels.

Workshop Formats (In-Person Gallery)

This workshop was held in person at Omnihum Gallery, a contemporary gallery and community gathering space in Taos that regularly hosts creative workshops and events.

The gallery setting created an intimate environment where participants could:

  • work at shared tables
  • observe each stage of the felting process
  • exchange ideas and inspiration
  • experience the meditative rhythm of fiber art making together

In-person workshops allow participants to fully engage with the physical processes of felting while building connections through shared creative practice.

Book a Felting Workshop

Participants interested in learning felting techniques can book upcoming workshops or inquire about private sessions. Workshops are currently offered in galleries, community art spaces, and small group settings throughout Northern New Mexico. Adult, children’s and mixed-age group options are available.

If you are interested in hosting a workshop or joining a future session, visit the workshops page or reach out directly through the contact form.

Workshops include:

  • mindful making sessions for artists &/or beginners featuring fiber art explorations with natural materials
  • wet felting vessels
  • nuno felting wearable textiles
  • also available- needle felting small objects

Complimentary Practices

Finished a third felt panel for Gathered and Felt this weekend. Tried to capture not only the physicalities of the felting process, but also the ways that the process compliments gardening. For these I’m using raw Navajo-Churro fleece, so the felting process is also the washing process. All of the water (and grey-water safe soap, dirt & VM) used in this process goes to my greenhouse garden and trees. I’ve been using this method for about a year and the plants are thriving.
It was 88F today and the sun/heat was a helpful collaborator. Overall these 6.5’ x 2.5’ panels take about 5 hours from start to finish 🐑💧🌱

gathering and feeling

For the last year or so I’ve tried to write blogs in a way that the SEO gremlins say is desirable. I edit and format and reformat until the little wordpress yoast SEO faces turn from red to green with smiles. Do the smiling greens direct more eyes to my words? I doubt it.

So here is where I will reenter the blog-o-sphere in a way that feels more fun. And creative and natural. Un edited, except for spelling error corrections, versions of me. We’ll see how it goes, I will likely continue to jump back and forth across styles, for clarity’s sake.

will return to this in a separate post about fiber & connections to place

Today’s short update:

I’m continuing to refine and edit all pages of this site. There are many things nested in the pages here, but visually tightened. Less is more (maybe?). And I also hope these little eggs are found…

I’m continuing to share learning experiences with children and teens on Outschool and in-person. Time spent practicing Yoga, creating art and following curiosities about the natural world in the company of young people is a gift.

Also a gift sharing creative practices with grown ups.

Recently I started seeing unexpected connections in my artwork. I think I’ve also started making more art to escape feelings of being out of control…as it relates to situations out of my control. Or maybe I’m just becoming more aware? I heard the phrase political trauma today, and I think that’s part of what I’m feeling. I can’t stop looking at the news, but at the same time it feels paralyzing. It’s a privilege to be able to explore and sometimes escape into art.

Here’s some of what I updated here today:

Gathered & Felt
Excited about new information related to this project. Peek at the “research & info” section on this page
HOME
it took me way too long to edit and adjust this home page…but it was a fun puzzle

Ok. I’m losing interest in writing anything more, lol…. If you got this far and go deeper into the folds, please let me know what you think. And how you’re coping with *all the things* Let’s connect show the little SEO gremlins what’s what.

Leave a Reply