Business name: Viltflexplek
Felt artist and tutor.
I studied graphic design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, in the Netherlands. A few years after my graduation in 2001 I discovered felt making. What started as a hobby is now for fifty percent my living, next to the graphic designing. The latter is behind a computer, but with the wool I can work with my hands, feel it, shape it and I am at the end of the line developing, as with graphic design there is the printer, where the colours never have the same brightness on paper as I created them on my screen.The graphic designing and felting seem two complete different worlds, but they get tangled like the fibres in felt. Since 2018 I do the layout for the magazine of the Dutch felt association ViltKontaktGroep and designed the logo. The other way around, I made different felted lamps and other objects for customers I designed a corporate identity for earlier on.I am always searching for the different possibilities of what to create with felt. I like the idea that I make my own lamp, wall covering, blanket, laptop cover, jacket, slippers, gloves, and more with sustainable material from around the corner. It gives a warm atmosphere to a space. The warmth the felt gives when wearing it. But also in art it is a generous tool to express myself, to leave a message of awareness.My message to the world: enjoy the pleasure of making your own (useful) things with your own bare hands. Back to the basics. The peace it gives you through the rhythmic movement. Work with natural material that hardly leaves a footprint. And also which I often forget, because it is so common as a regular felter, that you make your own textile out of loose fibres.For me the wool is still after all these years a magic material of which I can’t think of another that is so flexible in use and shape. And there is still so much to enjoy and explore, for myself and also to inspire and teach others.
