A show for felt-loving fiber fans

Julie Druker | Feb 10, 2016

Fiber artist, felt maker and designer Zoë Emily Lianga's show at the MERA school house opened with a well-attended vernissage on February 5, and those who have an interest in felt will be fascinated by the diverse work of this talented artist.

The show, titled “Zoë Emily”, includes a wide assortment of felt wall hangings, wearable clothing and functional and decorative objects, all created with Lianga's keen eye for design, function and pure aesthetics.

Lianga grew up in Brooke Valley and now lives and works from her studio in Perth. Surprisingly she has only been felting for the last three years. A former student of fashion design who specialized in sewing, pattern making and haute couture, she learned the art of felting while on a trip to New Zealand. At a chance gallery stop she fell in love with the work of felt artist Raewyn Penrose, who happily shared her felt-making knowledge with Lianga.

When Lianga returned to Canada she decided to go “all in” with felt and has since dedicated her life to it. “Being able now to build my own fabrics from fibers is just so exciting and it’s opened up this whole new world where I can combine my pattern-making skills with my felt-making and create my designs from the ground up,” she said.

Her wearable art includes shawls, cowls, vests, and coats, some of which are so amazingly intricate and soft to the touch (the cowls especially) that they seem magically spun from mother of pearl. It's as though the pearly and opalescent surface of shells were whipped up in some kind of cotton-candy-like spinning machine and spun into a magically soft and shiny fiber.

Lianga creates these fabrics from scratch through a process called wet felting. She starts with the finest and softest of wools, including merino from New Zealand, alpaca sourced locally and from Peru, camel from China and yak from Nepal, all obtained from highly reputable sellers. Into these she mixes raw silk and other plant-based fibers. She begins each piece with raw wool that has been washed and carded. She next breaks it up into small individual wisps and lays them out into fine uniform sheets, building up the thickness of the layers. Her thinner cowls require just two layers whereas her heavier garments are comprised of five. The final layer is where the art happens. Lianga designs the top surface with patterns and shapes in colorful blends, then soap and water are applied to the piece, which is “worked over”, meaning it is vigorously rubbed, rolled and kneaded until all the fibers interlock, resulting in a single uniform piece.

Lianga's surfaces are exquisite. Her designs, mostly abstracts, harken back to her love of mathematics but some are more image-based and one cowl seems to depict a silhouetted tree landscape.

The colors are subtle and rich, with the silk adding that intrinsic shimmer, allowing the hues to change depending on the degree of reflected light or shade. Also of note are her felted flowers, which she makes in many varieties. The petals she treats as a painter might, with each changing in color from base to tip and with tiny felted balls hanging from the thin individual stamens.

Equally appealing are her functional felted and quilted bags, soft ovoid-like forms that are happily free standing and whose colors and patterning are well considered, creating a functional object that begs as much to be used as it does to be seen. Her large pillows are also dazzling; one catches the eye with its swirling blue and orange bulls-eye pattern. The show included a number of impressive large felted wall hangings that show that Lianga has an inherent sense of composition and aesthetic abilities. Her “Triangles” combines thin lines and bigger swathes of triangular-shaped forms that hang together in a perfectly balanced and yet tense composition. Some of her newer works lie in these larger hung pieces, like the triptych titled “ The Trio of Profiles”, which is comprised of three smaller quilted pieces in subtler shades, showing various silhouetted human forms. The first has one alone; the second two together; and the third has many. This new work has Lianga exploring a new technique, pre-felting, which is a two-step process. The imagery suggests that she seems to be moving away from geometric patterns and towards recognizable stylized imagery that tells a personal story.

The show runs until the end of February and is open to the public on Wednesdays from1-4pm and Thursdays from 11 am-2:30 pm. The MERA Schoolhouse is located at 974 Concession Road 9A in McDonalds Corners. For more information visit www.zoeemily.ca

Fiber artist, felt maker and designer Zoë Emily Lianga's show at the MERA school house opened with a well-attended vernissage on February 5, and those who have an interest in felt will be fascinated by the diverse work of this talented artist.

The show, titled “Zoë Emily”, includes a wide assortment of felt wall hangings, wearable clothing and functional and decorative objects, all created with Lianga's keen eye for design, function and pure aesthetics.

Lianga grew up in Brooke Valley and now lives and works from her studio in Perth. Surprisingly she has only been felting for the last three years. A former student of fashion design who specialized in sewing, pattern making and haute couture, she learned the art of felting while on a trip to New Zealand. Specifically, it was at a chance gallery stop that she fell in love with the work of felt artist Raewyn Penrose, who happily shared her felt-making knowledge with Lianga.

When Lianga returned to Canada she decided to go “all in” with felt and has since dedicated her life to it. “Being able now to build my own fabrics from fibers is just so exciting and it’s opened up this whole new world where I can combine my pattern-making skills with my felt-making and create my designs from the ground up,” she said.

Her wearable art includes shawls, cowls, vests, and coats, some of which are so amazingly intricate and soft to the touch (the cowls especially) that they seem magically spun from mother of pearl. It's as though the pearly and opalescent surface of shells were whipped up in some kind of cotton-candy-like spinning machine and spun into a magically soft and shiny fiber.

Lianga creates these fabrics from scratch through a process called wet felting. She starts with the finest and softest of wools, including merino from New Zealand, alpaca sourced locally and from Peru, camel from China and yak from Nepal, all obtained from highly reputable sellers. Into these she mixes raw silk and other plant-based fibers. She begins each piece with raw wool that has been washed and carded. She next breaks it up into small individual wisps and lays them out into fine uniform sheets, building up the thickness of the layers. Her thinner cowls require just two layers whereas her heavier garments are comprised of five. The final layer is where the art happens. Lianga designs the top surface with patterns and shapes in colorful blends, then soap and water are applied to the piece, which is “worked over”, meaning it is vigorously rubbed, rolled and kneaded until all the fibers interlock, resulting in a single uniform piece.

Lianga's surfaces are exquisite. Her designs, mostly abstracts, harken back to her love of mathematics but some are more image-based and one cowl seems to depict a silhouetted tree landscape.

The colors are subtle and rich, with the silk adding that intrinsic shimmer, allowing the hues to change depending on the degree of reflected light or shade. Also of note are her felted flowers, which she makes in many varieties. The petals she treats as a painter might, with each changing in color from base to tip and with tiny felted balls hanging from the thin individual stamens.

Equally appealing are her functional felted and quilted bags, soft ovoid-like forms that are happily free standing and whose colors and patterning are well considered, creating a functional object that begs as much to be used as it does to be seen. Her large pillows are also dazzling; one catches the eye with its swirling blue and orange bulls-eye pattern. The show included a number of impressive large felted wall hangings that show that Lianga has an inherent sense of composition and aesthetic abilities. Her “Triangles” combines thin lines and bigger swathes of triangular-shaped forms that hang together in a perfectly balanced and yet tense composition. Some of her newer works lie in these larger hung pieces, like the triptych titled “ The Trio of Profiles”, which is comprised of three smaller quilted pieces in subtler shades, showing various silhouetted human forms. The first has one alone; the second two together; and the third has many. This new work has Lianga exploring a new technique, pre-felting, which is a two-step process. The imagery suggests that she seems to be moving away from geometric patterns and towards recognizable stylized imagery that tells a personal story.

The show runs until the end of February and is open to the public on Wednesdays from1-4pm and Thursdays from 11 am-2:30 pm. The MERA Schoolhouse is located at 974 Concession Road 9A in McDonalds Corners. For more information visit www.zoeemily.ca