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)…

Read full article


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…

Read full article


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…

Read more online


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.

Read article online


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.”

Read article online


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.

Read full article online


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.

Read the full interview online


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.

Read full article


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…

Read article online


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.

Read full article


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…

Read full article


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…

Read full article


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…

Read full article online


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…

Read full article online


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…

Read full review online


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…

Read full article


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…

Read full article


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…

Read full article


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…

Read full article


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…

Read full article


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…

Read full article