Sheila Thompson

Sheila Thompson moved her fibre art practice to Guelph from Toronto in 2021. She has been making fine woolen art felts for 18 years. She employs advanced wet felting techniques to create her art. Her style descriptors are geographic, organic, eco-focused, textured, 3d and richly coloured. She delights in poking politicians and developers to actually advance the climate/environment impact agenda as is evident in her artwork narratives. Over the years, she has focused on themes of community harmony and discord, migration, human/environmental clashes, and social justice. Her long running project, Habitat 2050, developed in response to daily news about the mess humans have made of the environment, reimagines the stories in a more harmonious future. The body of work consists of hand-molded 3d topographic felts in wool, Kozo paper and silk, and a series of felt Erlenmeyer flasks (Imposters) embellished with her prints of data, organisms and ecological phenomena. These flasks are a tribute to women in science and their determination to advance in their profession. Her latest additions to the project are a series of Petri Dish Perspectives and Leaves in Response to....

She has 15 years experience exhibiting her work in juried group and solo art shows in the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair, Riverdale Artwalk, Leslie Grove Gallery, Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre, Gallery 1313, World of Threads and others. She is an active member of ecoart and textile/felt art organizations and has curated a number of small exhibitions. She won an Ontario Arts Council grant to co-curate the travelling textile show, "Edge of the Forest" and won an award in Insights 2023 for her 3d felted Erlenmeyer Imposter flask. Her work is in private collections nationally and internationally.

She supports efforts to reduce her carbon footprint by repurposing art, donating materials and by reducing her production output.