Liz Whalen (b. 1994), works primarily with wool, employing felting, painting, and sculptural techniques to transform the material beyond its traditional use. Her practice challenges the boundaries of wool as a medium, often rendering it unrecognizable.

Her work moves between extremes: some pieces are thick and dense, embedded with objects and layered with pigment, while others are stretched to near transparency, testing the limits of the material’s structure and resilience.

More recently, Liz has incorporated wool and silk into collage-based works that explore ideas of layering, preservation, and temporality. These compositions evoke a physical parallel to digital processes, capturing materials in fleeting, suspended moments. Through this ongoing investigation, her practice continues to question and expand the possibilities of wool.

Drawing from her grandmother’s collections of linens and domestic objects, Liz reconfigures familiar motifs into altered, often otherworldly forms. Materials such as costume jewelry and textiles are embedded, allowing for new spatial and material relationships to emerge.

Through processes of manipulation and deformation, her work reflects on histories of women’s labor, reframing them within a contemporary context while continuing to expand the expressive and structural possibilities of felt.

Artist Bio

Liz received her M.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and her B.F.A. from the University of Kentucky. In 2018, she was featured in New American Paintings (Issue #136) as one of 40 emerging artists in the South, and in ArtMaze Magazine (London, U.K.). She was awarded the Arthur Oswald Scholarship and the Sam Fox School Travel Grant in 2019, supporting research in Germany and Mexico focused on natural fiber dye techniques and contemporary color theory.