The building’s occupants have responded warmly to the installation, and to watching the artist at work. In a kind of playful experiment, Arnold has placed a 20-by-10-foot fabric on the ground and is exploring how the color changes from yellow to maroon. The rocks are dotted with tufts of green moss, also fabricated by Arnold in a unique felting process that pairs velvet with wool fiber. Eventually, 438 feet of handmade wool felt will meander through and among the rocks, evoking deep-blue pools, quicksilver channels and turbulent whitewater. Soon “water” began flowing in the form of felted panels that transition gradually along their length through a half-dozen shades of blue. First, a “spring” in the form of unworked wool fiber bubbled up in the lobby. The installation was being phased over several weeks, engaging the interest of the staff returning to post-pandemic, in-person work. She has long yearned to reactivate the space, bringing the color, flow and sparkle of water to the rocky beds. The central feature of the 1993 building’s atrium is a long, rectangular rock garden, which reminded Arnold of a dried-up stream. This past April when I met with her, she was installing a large-scale work she has titled Homage to Water inside the headquarters of the Washington State Department of Ecology, in Lacey, Washington. The artist prefers working on an ambitious scale I first met Arnold when she created Palace Yurt in the conservatory of the historic Andrew Carnegie mansion that houses the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in 2009. Janice Arnold takes a dip in Homage to Water, a work she was installing inside the headquarters of the Washington State Department of Ecology. Arnold exploits these traits to create a palette of textures resembling everything from elephant skin to tree bark to molten lava. Other materials can be ensnared by wool fibers, buckling and rippling as the wool shrinks. The more it is rolled, rubbed and beaten, the denser and stronger the resulting fabric becomes.Īrnold explores the extremes of what is possible with the material, whether making stone-like slabs of solid wool or delicate, translucent webs using mere wisps of fiber. The scaly outer surface of the fiber causes it to shrink and become permanently entangled when it is wetted and agitated (like a wool sweater that accidentally ends up in the washing machine). The material most often used in the process of felting is wool. The seasonal, communal activities of sheep-herding and felt-making created a strong bond among community members and with the local environment. Felt was also used to make warm, weatherproof clothing and footwear, and blankets for pack animals. Herders migrated seasonally to find pastures for their sheep the sheep’s wool, in turn, provided the raw material for felt, which was used to cover the portable yurts or tent dwellings central to the nomadic lifestyle. It may also be the original sustainable, high-performance fabric: Naturally flame-retardant and water-resistant, it embodies the circularity today’s designers seek. This article is a selection from the July/August 2023 issue of Smithsonian magazine Subscribeįor thousands of years, felt was essential for nomadic societies in Central Asia. Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $15
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