Brittany Johnson has always created art, but the journey to recognizing herself as an artist took more time. It was a process that included watercolor painting, drawing, linocut, pottery and… baking.

In 2020, Brittany decided that she wanted to create less stringent and more realistic New Year’s resolutions. Simply, she wanted to learn something new each year.

The first year, she perfected baking a French silk pie. The second year, she refined her cake-decorating skills. And then, it was time for a change. 

“After those two years of food, I was like, ‘Food is just too much!’” Brittany says. ”Especially during the pandemic. Who is going to eat all of this cake?”

In 2022, with pandemic restrictions that made her feel like she was always at home, Brittany shifted her resolutions to nature.

“I think it really helps a person’s mind and body and soul to be connected,” says Brittany. “Living in the suburbs or in a city, you can go through your day inside. You can go to work, sit at a computer, commute in a car, be in your house. 

“But it does something different when you have the sun shining on your face. Your brain does something different. It slows down. It pays attention to these really subtle, beautiful things, like the wind through the leaves. The way that light shines on things differently.”

Learning in Nature

Incorporating the outdoors into her resolutions was natural for Brittany. She grew up exploring parks near her childhood home, including Baker Park Reserve, and that exploration continued in her adult life. 

For 2022, Brittany decided she wanted to learn more about the state she was living in, so she made her goal to visit a different state park each month. She enjoyed it so much that she decided to continue the park theme the following year, this time focusing on parks closer to her home.

“I thought, ‘What if I went to French Regional Park once a month and saw it change throughout the seasons?’” Brittany says.  

“And I don't ever really stop at something simple like that,” she continues, “So I was like, ‘What if I also took pictures when I was there? And did a felted landscape from that?’”

Brittany had recently begun learning the art of felted sculptures from a friend, but had never done a felted landscape before. So, for 2023, Brittany resolved to teach herself how to “paint” a scene using wool.

The Artistic Process

For the first step, Brittany visited French Regional Park capturing scenes with her phone. “I just walked around the park and took pictures of things that caught my eye and I thought were beautiful,” she says.

They weren’t hard to find. “Nature has always been an inspiration,” Brittany says. “In my mind, it's the most inspiring thing. This planet that we're on: It's really incredible.”

After the pictures were taken, she sorted through them, picking out the one she wanted to recreate for that month.

The photo could be anything from her favorite scene to an image she knew wouldn’t be incredibly difficult to translate with roving. She learned early on what was challenging. “Details of trees are really hard,” Brittany says, noting that taking a photo from further away gave her the distance that would help her with her creative process. “Colors and textures were a lot easier than details.”

Recreating the Photo

To create the felted landscape, Brittany sat with the printed photo, a piece of felt and the wool (roving) of various colors in front of her. She first found the appropriate colors, sometimes hand-mixing different roving to create custom shades that worked for that month’s particular scene. 

Unlike wet felting, which uses soap and water to blend fibers together, dry felting uses friction. To make her art, Brittany presses the fiber into the felt with a barbed needle, poking the roving into the felt so that that the fibers mat together.

“You keep doing that over and over again, until it sort of adheres,” says Brittany, explaining how it’s similar to when a dog’s fur gets matted.

Each 5”x5” piece can take anywhere from 20 minutes to, her longest one, 90 minutes. “It isn't even the best one, which is frustrating,” Brittany says, highlighting another lesson she learned: Effort and time don’t necessarily guarantee a better result.

But, these results are part of the wonderful process. “The first-ever felted landscape I did was the January one, which is… it's not good,” Brittany says. “And I think that's good that it's not good. Because we all learn. And people feel like, well I'm not, I'm not an artist because I'm not good at that.’

“No one's going to be good at something the first time they do it. If I were to analyze each individual one, it doesn't get better and better each time, each month. Some are better than others. Some pieces work better than others; some I blended better.” 

Brittany hopes that showing her entire series of work and the non-linear progression will inspire people to take their own creative leaps. All 12 pieces and their photographic inspirations will be displayed in the French Regional Park Visitor Center from January to March. “I'm going to show them all, for the sake of people seeing that it's a process and that they can do it, too,” Brittany says.

The Next Phase

Though her goal was only for one year, Brittany isn’t planning on setting this aside.

“I do think that I'll keep doing fiber art. I like that it is relatively quick and that it's forgiving,” Brittany says, explaining that she appreciates how tactile the process is. “You literally grab the fibers and are pulling them apart and blending them together with your fingers.”

Another reason to continue? Knowing she isn’t finished teaching herself.

“Getting depth has been really challenging. A lot of it feels like it's all on the same plane,” she says. “There are ways to do it that I just haven’t gotten down yet. I'll keep going because there's still more to learn.”

And today, when asked if she’s an artist? “I'm going to go ahead now and call myself an artist,” Brittany says. “Because I make art.”

See Brittany's Art Exhibit and Learn More About Felting

From January 15 through March 1, 2024, check out Felted Reflections: A Yearlong Celebration at the French Regional Park Visitor Center. The exhibit features Brittany Johnson’s felted artwork and her original photos.

From 1–3 PM on Saturday, January 27, 2024, meet Brittany at the French Regional Park Visitor Center to learn more about her project and try dry felting yourself.

Banner photo, showing a felted landscape piece in progress, courtesy of Brittany Johnson.