Coat Tales should keep me reading great literature for many years to come. Each piece is inspired from a book or play and features a coat—or vest, armor, etc.—that is specific to the place, time, and period of the book. The coats are wet and dry felted merino wool and often embellished with beads, ribbons and yarns. Many of the coats are mounted on oil or encaustic paintings.

In 2005 I learned how to make wool felt. Coats [and also hats] are the obvious narrative content for felt. Coats find their place in art history with Jim Dine’s Robes and Joseph Buoys’ felt suits. I hope that my pun makes a playful departure both from these artists as well as the literature that inspired the individual pieces.

June 2006
Simon Edwards gallery

Marjorie Masel

My name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
Candide by Voltaire
Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw
Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift
Don Quixote by Cervantes
Life of PI by Yann Martel
Memoir of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Silas Marner by George Eliot
The Tin Drum by Günther Grass (in progress)
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (in progress)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain(in progress)