SAA is so excited to have our very own Christine Blomquist share her amazing artistic talent at our 2nd Sunday Art Demonstration in March. From a very young age, she knew her passion was in the visual arts. Christine’s mother was a huge influence, teaching, guiding, and fostering Christine’s artistic and creative talents, where learning to draw, sew, embroider, and crochet were among the many skills she grew up exploring. After years of dabbling in various art forms, it became natural for Christine to explore and expand her skills with textiles, leading her to “paint with wool.”

As a fiber artist, Christine is largely self-taught, with this art form becoming her primary focus due to the unique, organic, and sculptural wool “painting” of working with wool fiber, where she uses wet felting and needle felting for the majority of her pieces. Christine describes fiber art as “the process of transforming loose fibers, typically dyed wool, into dense fabric. Wool fibers have microscopic scales that, when exposed to hot water, soap, and agitation, open up and interlock with neighboring fibers during the wet felting process. This dense fabric creates a 2-dimensional felted piece that is used as the canvas. A barbed needle is then used to join fibers and/or add more wool to give the image more dimension and detail. Think of the dyed wool as the paint and the barbed needle as the paint brush.”

Creating a variety of different images has always been Christine’s motto, and to that end, her personal photographs of the natural and ever-changing landscape provide endless inspiration for her wool paintings. Many of her favorite pieces feature animals, birds, flowers, and landscapes. Please come join us as Christine helps us have a better understanding of the wool felting process and the creation of amazing work in wool and fiber.

This event is free and open to the public.