Botanical Minds Wool Felting Workshop by Anna Ellis

Join us at The Dax Centre for Anna Ellis' new workshop: Botanical Minds!

As a part of the Internal Landscapes exhibition program, First Nations artist Anna Ellis will teach participants wool felting, including needle felting and wet felting techniques. Participants will learn to transform their wool into a small landscape picture, and a billy button flower.

For Anna Ellis, wool felting is an incredibly meditative and reflective practice, which helps her connect to self, culture and Country.

This workshop aims to provide participants with new creative skills to help them feel grounded and relaxed, and to connect socially with fellow arts enthusiasts.

When: 2 August, 1-4PM, 2025

Where: The Dax Centre, 30 Royal Parade, Parkville, 3052

Tickets: $40 per person. Limited spots available.

All materials provided. Light refreshment provided. All of the proceeds from the tickets go toward the artist and supporting artists with lived experience of mental illness. 

Participants are welcome to bring along any additional materials they may wish to include in their own work.

Participants with all levels of experience welcomed and encouraged.

About The Artist:

Anna Ellis is a fibre artist whose work explores the intersections of history, land, and personal narrative through the medium of wool. Rooted in an intuitive, process-driven practice, her work reclaims a material that shaped the colonial foundations of Ellis’ Country, transforming it into a vehicle for connection, reflection, and healing.

Drawing upon natural and botanical dyeing, felting, and other fibre techniques, pieces emerge in the moment—spontaneous yet deeply informed by landscape, both physical and emotional. Ellis’ practice is an act of reclamation, re-engaging with the land through the very fibre it was once farmed to exploit. Each piece carries echoes of place, memory, and transformation, embodying the rhythms of nature and the stories woven into the land itself.

Central to her work is the exploration of intergenerational trauma and the ongoing impact of colonialism. Through the tactile, meditative process of working with wool, Ellis confronts inherited wounds and collective histories, offering space for personal and communal reflection. Ellis feels her art is a living map of resilience and continuity, where threads of loss, survival, and renewal are gathered, honoured, and reimagined.

@anna.ellis.fibrearts