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PLEASE NOTE: DEEP COLOR IS NO LONGER A RETAIL STORE. YOU MAY TAKE A CLASS OR VISIT DURING ONE OF OUR OPEN HOUSES

THANK YOU

gallery

Read Claudia's thoughts on felting

SPRING OPEN HOUSE!

FREE

Sunday, April 10
11 am - 4 pm

Wool Sale

Make felt flowers for Spring and eat homemade cookies!

Free felting lesson starts at noon. Ongoing until 4 pm

Classes updated 12/1/10

Look at our classes page for new 2011 winter felting classes.

About the Artist

Deep Color is owned by Claudia Hoffberg. Claudia teaches all the fiber classes and hand dyes much of the fiber used.

Claudia

I studied ceramics and textiles at CCAC, Penland, and the School for American Craftsmen. After school I reluctantly put aside weaving and spinning to devote myself completely to ceramics. After 15 years of being a professional potter I closed the studio and began to weave tapestries. When Straw into Gold closed (local fiber store), I wanted to help fill the void. Six months later we opened Deep Color. My current obsession is with making sheets of felt and cutting them up, sewing them into quilts and baskets. In earlier life I also have taught sea kayaking, white water kayaking, and Breema bodywork.

SPRING AND SUMMER NEWS 2010

Wool is so easy. It's always ready to go. You can just grab some colors, get your water and soap and start playing around. As I work of play my mind calms down and I start to get more orderly. I tidy up my towers and sponges. Each little piece leads me to the next one. I have a huge bag of different colors spilling out on the table. I always need more colors. I listen to classical music as I felt.

 

Functional I like felt for 3 reasons:

1. You can make almost anything you need for yourself - rugs, clothes, boots, hats, bags, pillows, blankets, jewelery, scarves
2. Fashion and Garments - Felting into fabric (nuno felting) is very attractive. The wool crumples silk into this beautiful smooth shiny surface. Felting into cloth can make a very light but warm garment and you suddenly need hundreds of felt scarves. You can also make real clothes, coats, skirts, ponchos, dresses. We all want clothes that we really like and making your own clothes that are beautiful is like being a famous designer.
3. Art - Then there is the part of us that just needs to speak - the soul part that wants to make things because it needs to. You can't stop this part of yourself. Thank goodness. Or you eyes want to see something in particular so you make it and so that you can look at it.

Deep Color Textile Arts Studio

I think we are really a textile arts studio now - we don't just felt! We stitch, bead, dye, shibori, keep art journals, sew clothes, discuss art and eat cake. We are just a classroom studio now - not a store anymore.

Why are we going on to the all semester system?

I love, love, love teaching my felting semester group. Meeting every month to make art, to make your own art with a group of passionate felters is really satisfying. It's a guaranteed chunk of time when all you have to is make art, talk about art, and eat potluck. Don't we all want more time to make art?

 

How is Deep Color? How is my new life? (since the store closed)

Deep Color looks very nice inside with lots more tables to work on and a good wall of many colors of wool. The semester class meeting every month has been tons of fun to teach and everyone in there is getting shockingly good at very supportive of each other. The other felting classes have been smaller which is nice too and the weekend class format is much more fullfilling than 4 hour classes. I love all the time I have to make art now. I've started doing all the dying myself again, the colors are turning out very beautifully. It's all very wet and fumey though. I'm beading a six foot tall wire frame sculpture right now which is very obsessive. It looks thrilling though. It's interesting, after going through so much thought and struggle over closing the studio to have more time to make art, when I have my time to make art my little head voice says, "Shouldn't you really be doing something useful? Like cleaning the bathroom?"

 

Materials

We have really beautiful and unusual materials for the classes. I'm currently doing the dying and I've been dying.....

 

1. Painted and solid merino tencel in bright mustard greens, citrusy intense yellow, green blues, orange browns - new colors all the time. Felts very quickly

 

2.Silk and merino batting in rolls - this looks speckly and lush felted.

 

3. Haboti silk for nuno felting - 1, 2, 3, yd pieces - These look like paintings with many layered colors. Students have been felting them and making clothes.

 

4. Painted silk caps - These can be pulled apart and look like jelly fish on a felted surface.

 

5. Tussah silk and merino. The silk gives a luster that is softer than the tencel.

 

We also always have about 30 to 40 shades of merino, corriedale, different silks, and bamboo.

 

Generally, these materials are only available for classes but you can come in on April 18 to our open house to buy some.