Batt Art – Painting Fibre Pictures on a Carding Machine

This is one of the latest creations from our fibre arts studio, which is a rather fancy word for the crowded room in our house, where we attempt to contain the dirtier jobs of fibre work.  Not having encountered anything like this elsewhere, it’s highly unlikely you’ll find anything on the Internet under the title of Batt Art, but that’s exactly what it is.

In the fibre arts world, a batt is the thick wad of fibres that is drawn off a drum carder.  The drum carder mixes up or blends whatever fibres are fed into it, either through the ‘licker-in’ or painted directly onto the large drum and it is the fibre painting process that opened the door to an entirely new art form for me.

Art is all about experimentation and I cannot help but experiment with different ideas every time I crank the handle on the drum carder.  This particular picture was carded and then partially felted with tiny streaks of Firestar that really bring the picture alive.

David has had to develop a different method of framing using strips of Canadian Birch, which adds a clean and modernistic outline to the fluffy texture of the picture.  I absolutely love it and you can be sure you will see lots more of them being shown here in the future.

This particular picture was donated to an auction to raise money for a permanent art gallery in Enderby.

One of the best things about this art form is that if you don’t like the carded picture you’ve created, you can wander over to your spinning wheel and convert it into art yarn. One thing is for certain, there will never be two pictures the same!