About Heidi Hammel
Heidi Hammel became a wool sweater addict at the impressionable
age of 12, when her family traveled to Norway. She has worked with
fiber ever since. Thrift and creativity prompted her to learn how to
sew and decorate her own clothes. In early adulthood she designed
and stitched fine embroidery on apparel and accessories, card-wove
belts, made clothes and ran a commercial slipcover and re-upholstery
business while earning a bachelor’s degree in Chinese Studies.
After twenty-five years as a leader in progressive education, she
resumed a focused exploration of fiber arts in 1998. Two overarching
principles guide her work. As a student and former teacher at The
School in Rose Valley, which started in the heart of the 1920’s Arts
and Crafts era, she absorbed the ethic that an artisan strives to
make quality hand-made objects that are both functional and
aesthetically pleasing. As the child of an avid naturalist, she
learned to honor the intrinsic connections between all things.
Her work reflects her twin commitments to creating beauty that
serves a useful purpose in daily life and judiciously reusing the
world’s resources. She sews one-of-a-kind wearable art from
reclaimed materials: felt wool sweaters to create hats, mittens and
scarves, lined in fleece; neckties, felted wool, silk, linen and
cotton garments to shape handbags; parts of jewelry, vintage
buttons, yarns, beads and lace, pompoms made on a 1940’s, 600 lb.
metal lathe to embellish her work. Each item is a unique piece of
functional art. By using familiar objects out of context, her work
simultaneously provokes aesthetic pleasure and cognitive dissonance,
which resolve into a chuckle of recognition.
