Exploration or Completion?

Two Honest Paths in a Creative Life

When we work with felt, we are not only working with wool. We are working with time, touch, resistance, softness, memory, and slow learning.

Every piece begins long before we know what it will become. A colour catches our eye. A fibre feels different in our hand. A surface holds a certain quiet tension. We respond to the material, to the technique, to what is happening in front of us.

This is not a lack of direction. This is how material-based thinking begins.

And yet many textile artists carry a quiet sense of confusion during this phase. We look at piles of samples, fragments and half-finished experiments and ask ourselves: Why can’t I just make something finished? Why does my studio feel so scattered?

Over the years, both in my own practice and through teaching, I have come to see that this discomfort is not caused by a lack of discipline or skill. It comes from misunderstanding what kind of creative phase we are actually in.

There are times when we need to explore. There are times when we need to complete. Confusing the two is what creates frustration.

Exploration is not procrastination

In feltmaking — and in most material-based practices — exploration is where your visual language is formed.

When you work with textures, fibres, layers and surfaces without a fixed outcome, you are not being unfocused. You are researching. You are teaching your hands and eyes how to see and feel. You are discovering which surface qualities, shapes and rhythms speak to you. This is where you begin to understand what kind of work you are drawn to and where your inspiration truly comes from.

When you experiment, you get to know the material — not only what it can do, but how it responds to you.

Recently, I have heard many artists express guilt about taking time to explore, to reflect, to play. In our busy world, we have been taught to feel good about ourselves only when we have something finished at the end of the day. We compare ourselves to completed works we see online. We feel we should be more productive. Exploration starts to feel like wasted time because the world around us is always waiting for results.

So we push ourselves to finish pieces before we have really gathered new ideas. And the result is often work that feels flat, unresolved, or strangely disconnected from what we actually care about.

My biggest lesson from last year was that I did not spend enough time experimenting. Yes, I completed a few large projects, but without playing enough with materials and textures, my work did not develop very much in my opinion. This year, I have deliberately made space for exploration in my studio. I want to see where it leads me, because I feel the need to expand, to grow, to find new ground.

It took me many years to understand that exploring and completing are two very different processes. They require different ways of thinking, different kinds of attention.

When we are in research mode — collecting ideas, making samples, testing techniques — we are not thinking about outcomes. This should be a playful, curious time. Not every idea will work, and that is exactly the point. Mistakes teach us as much as successes.

But when we move into a project, everything changes. Now it is about choosing, deciding, committing and following through. There is usually not much room for play here. This phase requires focus and clarity.

Completion is a different kind of thinking

At some point, exploration naturally wants to become something else.

There comes a moment when you no longer want ten directions. You want one. You want to choose. You want to listen more deeply to a single idea and give it form.

This is the phase of completion.

Now you will start making decisions. How can I use what I have explored in a finished piece? How do material, surface, shape, form and composition support this idea?

You are no longer gathering possibilities — you are committing to one.

These two processes may feel like opposites, but they support each other. When you want to expand your work, you need time to explore before starting something new. When you want to bring something into the world, you need to leave exploration behind and focus.

This understanding is the reason I created two very different learning environments: one for exploration, one for completion.

Why I created two courses

When I began creating Textures & Surfaces, I wanted to bring together everything I know about felt, texture and material language. It grew into a spacious course, but my experience as a teacher reminded me that we cannot learn everything at once.

Out of this, The Art of Felting naturally emerged as a second course with a very different focus: one idea, one piece, taken all the way to completion.

Textures & Surfaces is for exploration. It is a self-paced, studio-style course where you work with textures, materials and surface ideas, building a personal library of samples and visual language. The emphasis is on discovery, experimentation and learning to see and design through material. It also includes guidance on turning felt into wall pieces, but at its heart, it is about developing skills and sensibility you can carry into any future work.

The Art of Felting is for completion. This is an 8-week guided course in which you take one idea and develop it into a felted wall hanging. With a weekly structure, live meetings and personal feedback from me, we move slowly and carefully from concept to finished piece, paying special attention to composition, design and the relationship between idea and material.

Neither approach is better than the other. They simply meet different creative needs.

The most generous thing you can do for your creative work is to be honest about what you need right now.

Some of you will feel ready to explore. Some of you will feel ready to commit. Some of you already have enough projects for the whole year, so there is no time for attending a course.

All these are honest and meaningful places to be. And all can help when you feel stuck if you choose the one that matches your energy. Ask yourself: What do I need right now to feel alive, curious and engaged?

This is why I keep these two courses side by side — not as competing offers, but as two doors into different ways of working with felt. They exist so you can meet yourself where you actually are, not where you think you should be.

If you are unsure which course fits you right now, you can find a simple comparison below showing the two paths side by side. And if you would like my personal thoughts, you are always welcome to reply via email or book a private meeting here.

As you can see below, "Textures & Surfaces" runs all year round as "The Art of Felting" is a 8-week course starting in 2nd of February.

Be kind to yourself and happy exploring,

Reena