Margaret Anne
Cold stone
Sedimentary layers
Weathered and worn
By the pull of moon and tide
Constriction of fleshy fibres
Wool from a living creature plus
Muscled friction
Feeling, felting, felt, felted, fulling, filled
When is the weight of silence simply stone?
When is it pearl?
What is the role of the body in communication? The gendered body? When is communication a one-sided assault, an affront that can only be met with enclosing, protective silence? The body’s truth is protected in folds, like the calcified whorls of a shell, the hidden folds of the body. Words, thoughts, feelings sit in the body, in the gut, weighted, protected, and sometimes trapped.
Wool and water are organic and have a life of their own as they interact. Like conversation, I can begin a felting project with an outcome in mind, but this is not a process that can be easily controlled. Sometimes the outcome is entirely unexpected—the ultimate shape can be surprising, the wool can felt in distorted ways, or refuse to felt at all. What is “success”? An outcome? An end product? Where do process and conversation lead?
“Wet felting” is a tactile and intensely physical experience. The smell of wet wool, the feel of rough and smooth locks of wool under the fingers, the repetitive movement of arms and shoulders and back. The making of a vessel in felt requires hours of bodily work:
design of shape and colour
cutting of the resist (a firm piece of plastic sheeting that fits between the layers of wool—preventing them from clumping together)
layout of two kinds of silk fibres and wool fleece (loose, from-the-sheep wool, that has been cleaned and dyed by a friend, in visceral colours)
wetting all the fibre
smoothing and rubbing the fibres with soap and warm water until the fibres slowly migrate together and begin to form a loose fabric, which is then shaped into a form. Mixed with wool, the silk ripples and shimmers, like sinews work within the body.
rolling the felt in a bundle, between layers of plastic and towels—up to 500-600 times
fulling the felt (pulling, rubbing and throwing it onto a hard surface repeatedly
final shaping, with my hands—in hopes that it turns out the way I imagined
Margaret Anne Smith
Margaret Anne Smith is a fibre artist, writer, and teacher, who lives on the shores of the Bay of Fundy, in Saint John NB. After 26 years of teaching and administrative work in universities, she is taking a self-made sabbatical, for dreaming, wandering, writing, and making.