Colour, form and texture from felt

Karen Workman labels a felt product in the exhibition room of Red Door Gallery. PICTURE / PAUL BROOKS

Karen Workman, felting artist, is the first of Red Door Gallery's guest exhibitors. It's a new initiative by the Putiki gallery to give guest exhibitors a month's showing.

The rear gallery chosen for the month-long exhibitions is a trove of colour, form and texture, all the things that felt can be. A wood fire gives warmth and extra colour.

"Felt has flexibility and boundless possibilities," says Karen. "You are only limited by your imagination." She says a lot of potters take up felting because it's easy to sculpt. "And you don't have to wait until the kiln either produces something beautiful or cracks it."

Much of Karen's work is sculptural - hats and bags, but she also produces coats and clothing of many descriptions, all testament to her love of colour.
"You can push and pull it and it's very forgiving, but it's difficult to make a plan. I tell my students, don't get caught up in what you're doing because felt has a mind of its own. It has a way of producing something different from what they expect."

Karen started felting in the 1980s ... "in gumboots, in somebody's garage, with thick rubber gloves, a boiling kettle and gluggy Lux Flakes. I made this piece of felt in this tray that was so disgusting - raw, dirty fleece. I thought, I'll never felt again."

Then, in 2003 she was in Bluff at a workshop run by Raewyn Penrose, a New Zealand felt artisan of renown. Karen loved it.
"I spin and knit and dye, and I've been doing that for years, probably since I was a kid. Felting is faster. You get a result quickly. You could make a garment in a day if you work at it."

Karen uses carded merino wool sourced from Dannevirke.
"I just love the magic of wool - it's the thing that makes felting so exciting. Wool has scales on it that interlock when it's wet and moved in a very gentle way. So it goes from being fluff with lots of air in it, to this fabric.
"My business is called How I Felt. It's true: I just work how I feel. Which is rather nice when you're 70."

Karen has been teaching feltmaking since 2006.
"It's an ancient thing, and I've been to Mongolia where they make it for their houses. I went with a group in 2001. There were six of us living in this Norwegian Lutheran mission which had a kind of fibre school.
"The Mongolians didn't know you could make hats, brooches and scarves out of wool - they made houses!"
She taught knitting, felting, dyeing and spinning. The group was there for six weeks.
Since then Karen has travelled globally to learn her art, including a number of trips to the US and Canada.
Karen makes her own clothes. "I love wearing my own garments."

Her exhibition is at Red Door Gallery for all of July.
The Red Door Gallery, 88 Putiki Drive is open from 11am to 4.30pm, Thursday to Sunday.