A Universal Mindset
David McPherson for Azure magazine
May/June 2023
Superkül designed the interior of the the new Toronto offices of Universal Music Canada and commissioned artist Kathryn Walter to collaborate on the wool felt wallcovering (a customization of her FELT ripple wall panels)…
The Campus of Cool
Isabel B. Stone for Canadian Business magazine
Fall 2022
Universal Music hired sustainable-design firm Superkül to outfit the space… The office walls are lined with a wool-felt installation by artist Kathryn Walter which has a natural acoustic dampening effect…
See an art collection come to life at the library in Thunder Bay, Ontario
Logan Turner for CBC online and CBC Radio One "Up North” October 22, 2021
For one week, a group of Indigenous artists came together to connect, heal and create at the Brodie Street library in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Led by Kathryn Walter of The FELT Studio in Toronto and Jean Marshall, an Indigenous artist based in Thunder Bay…
RAIC Allied Arts Medal, Canadian Architect
October 2019
This article is a profile of Kathryn Walter’s work with her FELT studio on the occasion of receiving the Allied Arts medal awarded by the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada.
RAIC Awards of Excellence, Royal Architecture Institute of Canada
October 2019
Jury comments: “Drawing from her background in visual arts and craft, and her expertise in industrial textiles, Kathryn Walter offers a leading example of how collaborators from parallel disciplines can contribute to architecture.”
FELT: Material and Experience, A Student Project in the Field
Kathryn Walter for Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture, April 2019
This article, written for an issue on Pedagogy, edited by Lois Weinthal, looks at the process of working with Ryerson University Interior Design students and the completion of an installation for the University’s library through a class competition. This account outlines the partnerships between students and professionals, and the industry and the institution.
DesignTO Designer Spotlight
Toronto Offsite Design Festival Feature, July 2018
An interview with Kathryn Walter for DesignTO about her FELT studio practice and her project 365 Pieces of Felt.
Heartfelt History
Canada’s History Magazine, June – July 2018
An article for Canada’s History Magazine introducing Kathryn Walter’s online exhibition Beaver Hats to Hockey Pads: A Social History of Felt in Canada which takes a close look at the many historical and cultural uses for felt.
With a single material, Dubbeldam pays homage to heritage and the power of Slack
Review by Kirsten Geekie, Frame online, March 6, 2018
The theme of connection is also translated into collaborations initiated with local makers. FELT Studio’s Kathryn Walter created an enveloping felt installation with layers of diagonal lines covering the walls and ceiling of the reception area…
The Present Though a Rear View Mirror
Rhys Phillips for Canadian Interiors, October 2017
The relationship between craft and technology becomes a common thread in the century-old brick and beam industrial buildings that are quickly appropriated by creative and tech agencies… In the (Slack) reception area, local artist Kathryn Walter of FELT Studio drapes the space in a striking, handcrafted cloak that not incidentally employs the very tactile fabric of felt.
Best of Canada Awards 2016
David Lasker for Canadian Interiors, October 15, 2016
Canadian Interiors Best of Canada Design Awards is the country’s only design competition to focus on interior design projects and products without regard to size budget or location. This years’ jury awarded the Aesop store on Queens Street West by superkul the top prize of Project of the Year. The project features a wall and ceiling of rippled felt by Kathryn Walter…
This Creative City
Elizabeth Paglicolo for Designlines, March 8, 2016
In her backyard studio, Kathryn Walter is at work on rippled, heather-grey felt wall panels... Samples from previous commissions – featuring everything from striated patterns to 3-D pyramid tiles – have been hung on the walls like museum pieces. “Felt has this mythic quality,” Walter says of the fabric, believed to be the first ever made by humans. “It’s at once organic and industrial in strength…
Weaving a connection between art and commerce
Karen von Hahn for The Toronto Star, January 23, 2016
Walter’s deft hand with industrial felt is already on permanent display at the recently opened Aesop, where, in collaboration with Toronto-based superkul architects who designed the store’s industrial-chic interior, Walter has created an elegant, rippling panel of pleated oat-coloured felt that rolls up one wall and onto the ceiling… The newly installed felt spill, however, which was created from some 2256 feet of remnants, is more in the line of a temporary intervention…
Aesop’s Toronto Flagship Exudes Urban-Chic
Eric Mutrie for Azure online, July 27, 2015
Superkül’s minimalist design for the Australian skincare company’s first Canadian outpost— in Toronto’s trendy West Queen West district—contrasts a warm felt wall with cool blackened steel accents… the tactile fabric wall by FELT Studio’s Kathryn Walter, a rippled installation which curves to also cover a portion of the ceiling, is meant to evoke a landscape…
Trade
For Mocoloco, December 9, 2014
One of the most interesting facets of Assets & Values, an exhibition of new Canadian design that took place during Toronto Design Week, was Trade, an installation by Kathryn Walter comprised of a pile of felt disks to which passersby could help themselves, in return for a token of exchange. The disks were remnants of an unrelated production, but their size and shape lent appeal. Coasters? Playthings? Insulators? And to add to perceived value, each disk bore the label of Walter’s studio, FELT…
A video profile of Kathryn Walter’s FELT studio
Canadian House and Home TV, Fall 2014
This interview with Kathryn Walter takes the viewer on a tour of the FELT studio workshop, showcasing wall coverings, furnishings and some of the ideas behind FELT projects and products.
Styles Files: H & H checks in with Three Designers
Beth Edwards for Canadian House and Home, February 1, 2012
Ten years ago, the Interior Design Show initiated a groundbreaking showcase for independent and emerging Canadian Designers called Studio North… We visit alumni who caught our eye early on and lived up to expectations: Kathryn Walter, Bradley Denton and Pascale Girardin…. Walter highlights felt’s textural appeal in large-scale installations…
Design’s Leading Lights: The Material Girl
Dierdre Kelly for The Globe and Mail, January 21, 2012
When Toronto’s Kathryn Walter first started experimenting with industrial felt just over a decade ago, she earned a reputation as a designer of intimate housewares. Since then, Walter has dramatically expanded her scope and repertoire using the material to create monumental wall installations…
That’s How She Felt
Leslie Jen for Canadian Architect, September 1, 2010
A strong background in fine art is evident in the work of Kathryn Walter, who utilizes industrial wool felt in a plethora of fascinating applications, from accessories to industrial design to architectural interiors…
Form Function Felt
Sarah Nasby for Ornamentum, September 1, 2010
Spool Stool elegantly expresses the felt-ness of felt: it’s strength and durability and its basic organizing principle—the ability to roll for storage. The design extends from the artist’s sensitivity to the natural characteristics of the material and the restraint in her control over it. The unforced gesture of the rolled objects creates an open-ended form with proportions that make it appropriate for myriad domestic uses from stools to tables to footrests to sculpture…
Rooms of Their Own: What is Behind Alternative Design?
David Balzer for Eye weekly, February 23, 2006
If Come Up to my Room is a place where artists and designers let loose, it’s also a place where Ideas, rather than products, reign. This sensibility—call it alternative if you will—underlines the career trajectories of all it’s participants: inter-disciplinarians who, while not entirely rejecting market place conventions, aim to test the limits of safe, saleable design…
Remnants
Review by Deborah Root for C-magazine, fall 2005
Kathryn Walter's performance/installation Remnants seeks to reveal ephemeral traces of the past, reminding us that our memories are always provisional and contingent on what we are willing to see…