Some people look at sheep and see farm animals. Louesa Roebuck looks at the wooly creatures and sees art. Roebuck’s August, a hip clothing emporium in Rockridge, was the scene of an interesting party dubbed Sheep and Weeds. It featured chefs preparing food and drink inspired by the local weeds sheep eat and an amazing art installation using their wool. If it sounds like a recipe for grass salad and fluffy white displays, think again. Guests at the party dined on creative, delicious, and even beautiful concoctions beneath a vivid green wall hanging.

The evening started off with a private conceptual dinner, featuring a “grazing” menu prepared by famed Chez Panisse chef Jerome Waag. The selections consisted of braised lamb with a confit of spring garlic, Sicilian fennel cakes, and three kinds of ravioli—sheep ricotta and parmesan, wild nettle, and wild radish with onions. The “weeds” on the menu were all organic and foraged from local farms and yards, all yummy things sheep enjoy. Dessert was honey-lavender and orange candied-walnut ice cream from Ici Ice Cream in Berkeley (and if sheep don’t eat it, they should). Guests washed it all down with fennel liquor.

When the doors opened to the public, people rocked out to a bluegrass band and nibbled on Peko-Peko’s lamb skewers with wild watercress. Artists Ashley Helvey and Sasha Duerr combined forces to make gorgeous felt creations from sheep’s wool that draped across walls and adorned the floors of the store. Helvey, a talented textile artist, fell in love with the felting process after studying in Germany and admiring the art of Claudy Jongstra. Her own gargantuan creation of fennel-green felt is truly an incredible feat of laborious work and exquisite beauty, evident in every raw, yet elegant tuft and fiber. Duerr—a sustainable textiles teacher at the nearby California College of the Arts—used organic vegetable dyes to finish off the felt with vivid hues of green weeds, specifically fennel, dandelion, mint, chamomile, sour grass, nettle, and mustard flower—all in season, and all on the dinner menu.

Beyond the felt piece, Duerr’s dyes hang from the ceiling in vials and were used to splash bare white walls, creating a wash of color. “They [Helvey and Duerr] fit into my narrative of whoever is doing the most interesting, beautiful, sustainable art in the Bay Area. They are both masters of their craft. I love the intersection of sustainable and organic and natural but also really refined and elegant,” says Roebuck of the collaboration.

You may have missed the party, but you can still check out the art at August, where it will hang for the next couple of months. After a successful event, the team is ready to take it to the next level, and a new locale. “I want to take the concept to other sites, like a Napa ranch, and make it micro-local in taking pieces that inspire us from the property. Everyone is game to roam and do another one,” says Roebuck. Home, home on the ranch? From what we’ve seen, “Sheep and Weeds” will do well on the road.

August, 5410 College Ave., Oakland, 510-652-2711, augustshop.com.