Christy Matson (b. 1979, Seattle, Washington) is an American artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. Matson studied at the University of Washington (BFA) and at the California College of the Arts (MFA), later becoming a tenured professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art's Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles.
Read MoreKnown for her striking, large-scale abstract textile designs in soft, earthy colours, Matson uses a Jacquard loom to hand-weave her work, which allows her to create richly coloured, curving patterns of unlimited size and complexity. Drawn to the instrument at the turn of the century, Matson found the Jacquard loom to be a bridge between the ancient traditions of weaving and the more technologically advanced forms currently practiced.
Each design is initially conceived as a sketch or watercolour before being woven on the Jacquard loom, and Matson frequently incorporates a rare type of Japanese paper thread into her designs, which she hand-paints before weaving directly into the canvas. Her abstract compositions are remarkably painterly and depict organic or geometric forms reminiscent of gestural brushstrokes, ranging from aqueous and brightly coloured shapes evocative of Helen Frankenthaler's luminescent canvases to precise, tactile designs suggestive of Paul Klee's pointillist works of the 1930s. Her work is influenced by the California landscape, and describes some of her work as a metaphor for its space. In blurring the lines between painting and weaving, Matson challenges existing hierarchies between decorative and fine art.
Matson uses the associations imbued into fabric as a strategy to investigate previously marginalised stories of artistic production—from the way in which the ancient art form of weaving is historically sidelined as 'craft,' with 'craft' serving as a synonym for feminine practice, to the legacy of the appropriation of textile patterns by Modernist painters. Her weaving structures reflect this complex history, ranging from waffle weaves and surplus thread used in contemporary fast fashion, to techniques inspired by ancient textiles and patterns found on ceramic shards. Fascinated by the way similar motifs developed in isolated communities that did not interact, Matson views their appearance as representative of a collective unconscious or geometric sublime.
Matson has been the subject of many solo museum exhibitions, including: Christy Matson: Crossings at the Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (2019); and Rock, Paper Scissors at the Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, California (2018);. She has also been featured in dozens of group exhibitions at institutions including the Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum, Washington, D.C.; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee; Asheville Art Museum, Asheville;The Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; and the Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland. She is the subject of an upcoming solo exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum, opening October 2020, as part of the exhibition series 'Currents', which has previously included artists such as Kiki Smith and Hiroshi Sugimoto.
Text courtesy Timothy Taylor.
