Wildlands Conservancy: Felted Birdhouses with Artist Mallory Zondag

Learn the ancient and awesome art of wet felting during this 4 hour workshop. Using wool, hot water, soap and the power of your own body you will learn how to transform wool into a cozy bird house! Felted wool is a sturdy, sculptable fabric that wicks water, insulates heat and is 100% biodegradable, making it a perfect home for your backyard birds. The technique learned during the workshop can be translated into the creation of hats, slippers, baskets and more! Mallory Zondag is a Mixed Media Fiber artist and artist educator. Her work explores our tenuous relationship with the continuous growth and decay of the natural world and humanity’s place within those cycles using felted wool, wax, fibers, fabrics and objects both found and recycled. Our collective fascination and repulsion towards natural processes, from blooming flowers to blooming molds, pushes her to sculpt moments of grotesque beauty, investigating this duality through the meditative and hands-on practices of wet felting, weaving, sculpting and stitching. Her work has been exhibited in both solo and group shows nationally and internationally. She was an Artist In Residence at The Allentown Art Museum, The Wassaic Project and many schools and community organizations. During many of these residencies she has led community art programs where felted wool living walls are collaboratively created with students of all ages and abilities. She was commissioned to create the sensory space for Arts Quest’s Accessible Arts program and was recently commissioned to recreate a component of one of Amalia Mesa-Bains’s installations for her retrospective at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. We will be working outside, under our pavilion. Restrooms are available. This workshop is for adults only.