Visit with Charleston visual artist Kim Keelor while she demonstrates how she uses wool to create fiber paintings through an old-world process. There will also be some opportunities for guests to try wool-felting throughout the day with wool shorn from the Middleton sheep. Keelor’s artwork captures the colors, moods, movements, and objects of everyday life in Charleston and South Carolina. She paints with watercolors and in oil, but mostly with wool and fibers.  Her work is currently exhibited in juried art exhibitions in Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina, and in Duluth and Savannah, Georgia. South Carolina.

The Stableyards will also be the site of the annual sheep shearing using traditional steel blade hand shears. Costumed interpreters will remove the fleece from the animal; skirt the shorn fleece to remove matted or dirty wool; and role the fleece so it can be sent off for processing.

From the Artist, Kim Keelor

“I am captivated by the textural superiority and versatility of wool as a medium over paint and the tension or flow one can create with it, as well as the sustainability and organic nature of wool. I employ an ancient, handwork technique that predates weaving called wet felting. I often blend the wool with recycled sari silk and cotton, then finish with needle felted details. My works have deliberate frays, uneven borders and raised sculptural features, as imperfect as life itself. No machines of any kind are used. Many are paired with vintage artifacts from related locations to form assemblages enlivening the portrayal of that moment in time, repurposing items that were touched by the hands of others in generations past.”      Kim Keelor, KeelorCharlestonArt.com