ARTIST'S PHILOSOPHY
Inspired by the mesmerizing beauty of nature’s shapes and textures, while influenced by the classical arts and antique philosophy, artist Jeanne Akita creates unique seamless and reversible decorative and wearable art by fusing her art vision with ancient felting technique.
Like 3D flexible fiber sculpture, each one-of-a-kind piece is meticulously created, using only hand agitation, water, soap, and hand-selected sustainable loose fibers such as the finest Merino wool, Tussah silk, Flax, as well as raw lamb’s fleece from the small Idaho farm.
Her artistic grand finale implements shibori dye method and brush painting on felted garments to incarnate a work of art that celebrates the beauty of inner harmony and peace.
ENVIRONMENT CARE / SUSTAINABILITY
Jeanne focuses on a sustainable creating process based on ecological approaches and materials. Gladly, the movement toward more natural, chemical-free, environmentally-safe, and cruelty-free products is becoming more and more widespread.
Felting fundamental techniques is a great eco-recipe as it is mostly manual process that requires just a hand agitation, small amount of water, and natural soap.
Illusions Lab' collections include fine art and high fashion garments and accessories without compromising the commitment to using only natural fibers and fabrics. It's also important to mention that felting technology keeps it waste-free, as every single tiny piece of fabric or wool felt will be used to create an amazing texture of the next project.
Luxury natural fibers come from a wide range of plants and animals from the small local farms and all around the world – from sheep, goats, camels, alpacas, paco-vicunas, silk cocoons, cotton balls, sisal leaves, coconut husks, stalks of jute, hemp, flax, ramie plants and many others.
Beautiful recycled natural fabrics such as sari silk from India are always a great way to infuse something new and fresh in the designs and often give an inspiration for creating something absolutely unique.
Jeanne's values have led to support U.S. local farmers who produce natural fibers and contribute the growth of a local economy based on ecological and cruelty-free movements.
PARTICIPATIONS
Through the last years, Illusions Lab's collections have won the awards at the at the top art festivals (Kimball Arts Festival Best in show 2018, 2019), shown at the international and US fashion weeks (New York, Denver, Vancouver and others), and appeared on the cover of the fashion and beauty magazines such as Picton, New Face, Surreal Mag.
Illusions Lab's on-line shop shows positive customers reviews, social media profiles count thousands of followers.
2019 Art shows List : NY Collective in New York and Sun Valley, Lincoln Center Craft NY, Utah Arts Festival, Cherry Creek Denver, Art in the Rockies, Kimball Arts, Sausalito and others).
Jeanne is always open for collaborations, partnerships, and new interesting projects.
ART & ANCIENT FELTING TECHNOLOGY
While felting is an ancient technique invented thousand years ago, it's still developing with every single project, bringing the opportunity for creating a variety of different art effects in apparel and accessories.
Differing of industrial felt, hand felted pieces may have no seams or stitches as they sculptured as a whole 3D piece. Exclusive sophisticated texture created through artisan hand felting process is a fusion of natural luxurious high-quality loose fibers and fabrics.
Felting is a pretty meticulous and time-consuming process. To create one garment the artist has to pass the multiple stages - create the special 3D felting template, layer the fibers, actual felting, filling process, hand dye, attach the fasteners and other decorations. Usually, the whole process takes at least 20 - 40 hours.
