Becky Utecht presenting Community Felting at sticks and stones

I attended a felting workshop in Duluth in the nineties. I , and the gals that went with me fell in love with the process.  We wore our hats home that night, and all the way home from the workshop we drank Lattes and dreamed up projects that you could create with this ancient process , and I did some tooling up after that, but as they say life got in the way, and I never got my hands in it again.  I am so excited to find out that Becky will be demonstrating her techniques at the festival this year.   I hope Becky will pop into the blog and tell us a little about what to expect at the demos on Saturday.  

 For those unfamiliar with Becky, she has been an active member of KCAA all the years I have known her!  When she tackles a new medium, it is never dabbling.   In the early years, her pastels paintings with their striking portrayal of light were her focus,  When she was raising chickens, she learned the ancient art of pysanky, or Ukranian egg decorating.   Not only learned it, but studied it , and achieved mastery of that medium.   Was it the chicken or the egg that came first?

 In the same way, the felting is an extension of the sheep that Becky raises.  Over the last several years, she has developed a high quality herd of wool bearing sheep, and has studied extensively all of the processes from shearing to spinning dyeing, and all of the possible uses for the high quality product that results.  Some where in the mix, there are some very fine handmade soaps in Becky's multufaceted line of creations.

 Now the term "master" gets thrown around a lot, and there are many definitions of mastering ones craft.  An academic version of such is to earn the credits from an institution that will give you a master title after your name, and there is the kind of master that puts in the time and research and practice it takes to achieve the skills, and once one achieves the skill level with that medium, they are able to express themselves  and that is where the artist comes in.  In  this age of instant gratification, the mindset is rare for a person to learn a skill from the ground up and spend the years it takes to satisfy merely the artist in one's self before actually presenting works in public!!

Becky has done that too, with much success.  When I see the beautiful compositions that Becky has created with her felting, I am reminded of those first pastels I saw of the geese and the chickens, and I see the same sensitive treatment to light and composition in the felting.  In other words Becky has mastered her crafts, all of them, to artistic levels and her collection of awards and achievements speak for that. I just saw on her blog
 click here for River Oaks Sheep
    We are so lucky to have artisans like Becky right in our community, and I am sure we will be getting a world class hands on demonstration at the festival this year! 
Later then, Denise