living wall I

Residency at Forks Elementary. Easton PA

In November 2017 I went to Forks Elementary to work with their students for three weeks on a collaborative community art project. Forks Elementary students were K-5 and every single student was able to collaborate on this piece. The students were shown the process of wet felting, a method of adding soap, warm water and applying agitation to unspun wool roving to create felt fabric.

This new skill was used by all the students to create individual pieces of felt in the form of leaves, vines and rocks. Every student also worked on the large piece of felt. They worked together in teams of four or five to add new wool, apply soap and water and roll the 5 foot mat back and forth to agitate the wool.

At the end of it, I took the work the students had created and pieced it together into large fiber living wall. Through hand stitching and needle felting, all of the students individual pieces were worked into one cohesive piece. The end result was a piece of textile art made entirely of wool and meant to appear as a lush garden on the wall, full of life and creativity. The piece now resides permanently at Forks Elementary. A piece of large art the students can look at everyday as they grow and think “I made this, we made this together” and feel connected to their community through that shared artistic experience.