Jaana Mattson

With an innovative fine-arts perspective on traditional craft materials, this work captures impressions of land and sky with needle felted wool. As you approach a piece it reveals itself as more than a rich two-dimensional landscape image. The organic textures of fiber against wood draw the hand as well as the eye to examine the subtly layered detail and composition of these mixed-media sculptures. While the artist’s roots are in the Midwest, a lifetime of observant travel has offered a master class in landscape; light and color, weather and season. These impressions are captured in needle felted wool fused strand by strand in a painterly fashion with a barbed needle. Delicate layers of dyed wool are built up on the surface one wisp at a time and blended by the viewer’s eye to create an incomparable richness. The completed felt textiles are recessed into locally milled and reclaimed timber, capturing an organic resonance between wood grain and wool fiber.