Body and soul: Pam Hovel
Body and soul: Pam Hovel
Body and Soul.
Body and Soul has evolved to embrace the body and our soulful environment.
My connection to nature and the beauty of natural materials has taken me in different directions over the years, culminating in a love affair with felt about eleven years ago.
The magical properties of wool + water+ friction (felt) and plant-based dyes enables me to express myself while staying within the boundaries of sustainable living.
Using felt as a creative medium, this exhibition explores sustainable fashion and snuggly homewares and includes contempory lightweight felted dresses, all botanically dyed, as well using natural coloured fleece to bring a hint of the wild into the home.
Pam is an innovative textile artist living near Bendigo, Victoria. Her light filled, mud-brick studio on her family property is surrounded by bushland and wildlife and it is this natural environment that both inspires Pam’s work and provides materials for her textiles.
Creating has been an integral part of Pam’s life, initially through necessity when she sewed clothes for herself and then for her children. Larger projects have also featured in Pam’s creative life. With her husband, she built their mud-brick home, many years before sustainability and recycling were buzz words. The home was built largely from reclaimed materials and is surrounded by a large garden, Pam’s passion prior to textiles.
A lifelong interest in textiles led Pam to discover felting in 2004 and she has been passionate about it ever since. Although she has attended numerous workshops with well-known felt artists, she is largely self-taught and has won awards for her work.
Following her creative instincts, Pam has sought sustainable art practices. After exploring different techniques and fibres, she developed a beautiful, soft felt fabric using super-fine Australian Merino wool. More recently she has focused on more feminine and highly artistic garments, marrying wool and silk in the felt process, as well as using raw and wild fibres with dramatic results.
Pam’s Body and Soul exhibition will be opened from 6thuntil 17 May 2015