Felter creates art from the fleece of local sheep

SUMNER – In a mixture of earthy textures, natural colors and luxurious fibers, the woman known as Nevas finds art.

“I don’t need electricity,” the 50-year-old hand-felter said. She poked a yellow tuft of wool into a blank square of felt with a needle. “You could do this by candlelight if you wanted to.”

A moment later the needle bobbed in place, turning the wispy fiber into a finely packed yellow spot on the felt.

A finished square would take another five hours.

“I like the energy of this work,” said Nevas, who owns a farm in Buckfield and works to close the gap between agriculture and art.

Too many people invent boundaries between them, she said. Her felts represent a kind of bridge between the farm and the gallery.

“It’s a straight line from the sheep in the field to my work,” she said.

She uses wool exclusively made at the Wrinkle in Thyme Farm in Sumner. Farmers Marty Elkin and Mary Ann Haxton harvest the wool from their sheep, card it and dye it themselves.

It was Elkin who first introduced Nevas to felting.

“I wanted somebody to do it with me,” Elkin said.

Quickly, with Elkin as her mentor, Nevas took felting to new directions. She came up with her own designs for the uniform squares, which measure 4 3/4 inches across. They were displayed at the former Turner Center for the Arts and sell for $50 each.

Her designs run from scenic to abstract to whimsical. One favorite image is of a rooster wearing boots. Another is of a cow with the words, “Got Cow.”

“I’ve never been able to be put in a box,” she said. “People should throw the box away.”

Nevas has painted with oil on canvas and with acrylics. She has sculpted wood. This is just another expression, one that is unsullied with machinery or polluting chemicals, she said.

Elkin makes her own dyes from holly hocks, elderberries, birch bark and marigolds, often tweaking her mixtures to suit Nevas’ desire for a greener green or a blue with different hues.

When Elkin completes her yarns, she is so in synch with her farm that she can usually tell which sheep the processed wool came from.

“When Marty is out shearing her sheep, that’s art, too,” Nevas said.