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39 ORNAMENT 38.1.2015 often delightful creativity. Owens is the only child of two wood carvers who, when Owens was very young, earned their living selling their carvings at craft fairs. When she was in the fifth grade her father was diagnosed with ALS, known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, and he slowly lost the ability to use his hands for carving. "But he adapted," Owens says. "When he couldn't carve, he transitioned into music. He was also a very good musician and played the piano well. When he could no longer play the piano he made electronic music on a computer with a cursor. He continued to adapt and be creative. I think about that a lot, the idea that limitations can lead to creativity, maybe a different kind of creativity." Owens, who enjoyed art classes throughout high school, says she started considering a career in art because "my parents taught me to prioritize things that enriched my life and brought happiness, and I was beginning to see that was art." In her own life limitations, of one kind or another, have forced her to learn new skills. After college she lived in a Seattle apartment with the man who is now her husband. They had a total of four hundred square feet. "I was trying to make work with a lot of constraints because of my living situation. I had no space and didn't want to make noise. So I taught myself to make needle felt." Needle felting is a very simple technique that involves punching a rough-sided needle through raw wool so many times that the wool eventually forms into felt. Needled felt is now one of Owens's favorite materials. Some of the felt and sterling silver pieces on tour with the exhibition organized in The Netherlands are putty-colored, felted, highly textured cones sprouting from sterling rings. The rings are from her Adaptation Series. "I like the play of industrial objects with the organic, and in the rings the interplay between the soft felt and hard metal. I like needle felting because it is so intuitive. You just keep working with it and eventually you have a form that you create as you go along." Despite her exposure to her parents' sculpture, Owens did not start working in three dimensions until her first year of college, when a course in multi- dimensional art opened her eyes to new possibilities. Her teacher assigned all twenty-five students to bring twenty-five identical objects to class. The objects were divided up evenly so that everyone started with the same inventory of materials. The assignment was to make a work of art. "I ended up making a wall installation that I built up with toilet paper. It was a process oriented piece. And I thought it was very interesting to be working with your hands and with the materials as a way of arriving at a design. I didn't design the piece first. I came up with it through the process. That is how I work now. Process is very important to me. I've tried to design things, and it doesn't turn out very well. I design better when I get my hands on the materials, then Zen out and let it happen." Owens's husband Paul Poechlauer shares her belief that the best design comes through process, and that ADAPTATION #5 RING of sterling silver, wool, formed, fabricated, needle felted, 10.2 centimeters, 2014. OUTLOOK RING of sterling silver, formed, fabricated, 3.9 centimeters, 2013.