Gould Studios/ALMA HATS is currently a location to house a variety of concepts and productions. Primarily I am focused on presenting items here that I have created by hand. These include the majority of the hats that you see in the shop section of this site. Including bespoke designs, and one of a kind ready to wear beaver blend fur felt hats, as well as the paintings on canvas within the galleries.

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ALMA HATS: Each hat is made at my home studio in Aptos, California, in Santa Cruz County, USA. The hats are produced using the finest materials that I have available, while being dedicated to sustainable sourcing methods. Thus all my beaver blend fur felt hat bodies are made from material originally Felted half a century ago in most cases.

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I use traditional millinery techniques to produce the shapes you see, including steam forming the felt over a wood block called a 'bashing block', ironing or 'pouncing' the brim and crown, sanding or and lightly burning off stray fibers, hand creasing the crown, sewing in the sweatband, tacking in the liner and designing the banding.

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I truly find great satisfaction in producing these fine bespoke hats, and sincerely hope that if you decide to purchase an ALMA HAT, you will be pleasantly surprised at the quality of craftsmanship I have put into each one.

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PAINTINGS:

My work on canvas stems from a great curiosity in the unseen forces at work within the cosmos. I believe that in some way, I am revealing a glimpse of these essential qualities that underpin this shared experience through painted expressions. Weather it be the look in the eye of a portrait subject, or a series of strokes within a modern work.

 

I call my process 'Momentism' because for me painting is much akin to tossing a stone into a still pond. Reality is forever altered and the moment drifts from purely the painting process; a moving mediation and analysis, to the observation of the finished piece as manifest in the world. Then the moment of painting proceeds further onto the experience of each consecutive viewer and continues to ripple out through new uncharted moments in time and space. Perhaps even long after the artists awareness has departed.