Sarah Brooker - Textiles

Sarah Brooker spends days creating detailed three dimensional pictures - only to squash them flat in just a few hours. This may seem like an unusual way for an artist to operate but Sarah has been doing it for the last 15 years.

Felt is the oldest form of textile known to man and has been traced back thousands of years to nomadic tribes who roamed Turkey and Iran.

The basic principles behind melding fleece fibres to create a strong fabric have not changed since then, although Sarah gives the process an exciting dimension by using it to create images in the same way an artist employs a palette of paint.

Fruit, flowers, cats and books have been among the subjects of her work in recent years, with exhibitions such as the recent Tutti Frutti at Brewery Arts, Cirencester resulting in commissions for wall hangings from the owners of some of the smartest homes in Gloucestershire and organisations such as the Bingham Trust.

Sarah has also made handbags for the Turner Prize-winning ceramicist Grayson Perry, an artist as famous for his cross dressing as he is for his vases and the challenging subjects they explore. "Grayson and I studied sculpture together at Portsmouth Polytechnic and before that we did a foundation course in art together when we were 17," said Sarah.

“I've had quite a few commissions from him, including a 'panto bag' that I made for him last April.”

Sarah learned the art of felt making at Goldsmiths College in the late 1980s.