BAILEY CURTIS
baileycurtistextiles@gmail.com
Textile Artist Working in Handmade Felt
Contact Bailey
Fleece, felt and me
I make large flat felt pieces on a plastic covered table in my studio or in the garden using carded batts of dyed wool or at Felt in the Factory, near Ross on Wye when I can get there.
I trained as a spinner and weaver, having done the Bradford Certificate of Weaving, completed in 1974.
We had colour lectures by the great Sidney Harry, they blew my mind. I gave up plant dyeing & started using Chemical dyes. I was used to working with wool, teaching spinning regularly where I lived in west Gloucestershire.
I started felt making after a visit to Chelsea Craft Fair in 1984. I used the fleece that I had for spinning, ‘Ile de France’ obtained from a local farmer. The wool was ideal for felting, thrilled with the results, I was off, although I didn’t give up weaving & spinning until 1989.
My recent poetry word hangings have been included in ‘Fresh Air’ an open air exhibition at a lovely garden, The Old Rectory Quenington, Nr Cirencester, Gloucestershire. Some were on tree trunks, another under a rose pergola, a really large one draped over a cherry tree, the work was based on Dylan Thomas’s ‘Under Milk Wood’.
Smaller works were a Robert Frost poem, a whimsy series of sayings, one by Mae West, who is always good for a quote. I sold two of the poetry pieces from the exhibition that was on for 4 weeks, but the work was hung for 2 weeks prior to opening.
Making work for outdoors I have to take into account of how long the exhibition is on, the robustness of the felt, will it stand up to the rigours of the British weather! Most of them do.
Bailey Curtis
