88 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {home & design} ART IST wild and wooly words by JOHANNA HARLOW Over the summer, a dozen woolen landscapes warmed the walls of M Stark Gallery, an airy art haven on the edge of downtown Half Moon Bay. The show—dedicated to the work of needle-felting artist Birgitta Bower—is called Wild and Wooly, a fitting title for fleece scenes so full of texture and motion they almost feel alive. Birgitta knows how to tease wisps of wool into drifting clouds and creeping fog. How to use spiral stitching to create a roiling sea and how to thicken the wool at the crest of waves so the surf seems likely to slosh from the canvas. Photos of Birgitta’s work don’t do these tangible tableaus justice. In one, a husky’s snout protrudes from the canvas. Its beaded eyes hold a life-like shine—something you’d likely miss if not for the light pouring through the gallery door. The afternoon sun also illuminates a solitary silver thread, shimmering across the horizon of a Redondo Beach scene. “Silver lining, I call it,” Birgitta beams. After showing her work at the Coastal Arts League, the Falkirk Cultural Center in San Rafael and the Marin Society of Artists, Birgitta’s art caught the eye of Marianna Stark, the curator and owner of M Stark Gallery (and self-described “cool hunter” of contemporary art). Right away, she recognized its mastery. “I show artists who live on the Peninsula, who I think are doing exquisite, interesting, original work,” Marianna describes. Not just traditional landscapes, but artwork that “hits me in the solar plexus.” Birgitta first found felting through figurines, which she sold at the annual Swedish Christmas Fair in San Francisco. The El Grenada local turned to needle felting over a decade ago and describes the medium as “kind of painting and sculpting at the same time.” Her main source of wool is from Romney sheep that graze on the weeds of a Sonoma vineyard. Though the coarseness of the material would make for an awfully itchy sweater, it gives the tiny barbs of Birgitta’s felting needle something to latch onto, making it easier to jab bits of wool through the canvas. She PHOTOGRAPHY: JOHANNA HARLOW
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