Saar Snoek discovered felting and never looked back. She creates intricate contemporary wearable art pieces with wet felting techniques.
How did you get started making art? Why do you do it?
I’ve always made things, ever since I was very small. I’m just not suited to having a “normal job”. I simply don’t really understand how those things work. So being an artist was the obvious choice.
Tell us more about your journey into felting. How did you get into what you do creatively?
I discovered felting by chance in 2016, and I noticed how much the material often determines the final visual outcome. It often appeared formless and a bit anthroposophical. I wondered whether felt could be a fully-fledged, autonomous, and controllable medium.
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Around that time, I made the definitive switch to felt. What’s special is: I can paint and sculpt at the same time. Since then, I’ve been working full-time with felt.
When was the first time that you remember realizing that you are a creative person?
I’ve been told that one morning I cut all the wild teasels in the garden into cubes. My father thought it was wonderful.
What have you learned along the way to make your designs more true-to-life?
Attention. Attention is everything. Even messing around, I do that with attention.
When it comes to creating, are you more of a planner or an improviser?
With sculptural felting, you need a plan, a strategy. Simply because everything will shrink, but by how much?? And because beyond a certain stage, the wool just won’t stick anymore.
But it’s exactly this structured framework that allows me to improvise. I’m not dogmatic at all, just practical.
Where do you find inspiration for your designs?
From nature — especially in the endlessly repeating mathematical patterns. And from the material of wool itself.
Do you use a sketchbook, journal, or technology to plan or keep track of ideas? How does that help your work develop?
I love using a sort of finger painting app on my phone — I make quick sketches on it, though sometimes I can’t quite make out what I’ve drawn. Good ideas come back on their own if they’re really good.
My phone’s camera roll is also a kind of diary: beautiful, colorful beetles, leaves, interesting shadows…
And of course, inspiration also comes from the material and the process itself. Wet felting is an organic process — shrinking is basically reverse growing.
Wool has unique intrinsic properties — and a kind of will of its own — that emerge during felting. Depending on how you lay out the wool, the felt shapes itself. It’s a wondrous process.
Describe your creative space.
My studio is small, about 40 square meters, but I can do everything there — dyeing, felting, I can even set up a mini photo studio. It’s a really lovely space.
How do you organize your creative supplies?
Moth-free!
How often do you start a new project? Do you work actively on more than one project at a time?
I always have several things going at once. I’m curious by nature, so I just make the things I want to see or figure out. I teach workshops on location, so I travel for that.
Right now, I’m preparing for a solo hat exhibition in Portugal and creating work for a group show in South Africa. I also love collaborating with people from other disciplines — it keeps things fresh.
Can you tell us about the inspiration and process of one of your works? How does a new work come about?
I find the mathematical side of sculptural felting really interesting.
You start with a flat resist, and then a three-dimensional form emerges. When hat-making, I stretch my felt over a hat block.
Getting everything to land in the right place is exciting. I made a series of hats about this (see the Fibonacci bucket and acorn hat photos).
Which part of the design process is your favorite? Which part is a challenge for you?
The challenge is definitely the “office side” of being an artist: bookkeeping, writing invoices, communication, basically everything that comes with it but isn’t about making. It all takes up a lot of time.
How has your creativity evolved over the years? What triggered the evolution to new media/kinds of work/ways of working?
Of course. I’m getting freer in what I do. I care less and less what anyone thinks.
I’m an outsider too much to be a hatmaker, too much of a hatmaker to be a fine artist, too craft-based to be considered autonomous. I just do my thing.
If I find it interesting enough to make, there’ll be people out there who’ll appreciate it too (and there are).
Do you prefer the kind of project that is challenging and requires attention, or the kind where you get in your meditative zone and enjoy the process?
One doesn’t exclude the other. I try to plan my projects so that I’m well enough prepared to enter the zone. That’s when hands and mind become one. If I have to calculate or measure something during the process, I’m instantly catapulted out of that zone.
What do you do to keep yourself motivated and interested in your work?
I love my work. I can’t imagine a life without making. I think taking good care of myself helps — enough sleep, good food, a walk every day.
What traits, if any, do you think that creative people have as compared to people who are not creative?
Curiosity, openness…
Where can people see your work?
You can see my work online on my website, on my Instagram, and currently in the exhibition L’art et la manière in France. I won the Stephen Jones Creativity Prize this spring!
Interview posted June 2025
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