Know the Weaver Series # 3 August – September 2014
Christy Matson Independent Artist, University Lecturer and TC2 Owner
WEBSITE: www.cmatson.com
Christy Matson is an artist living and working in Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been included in recent exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Arts Houston, The Milwaukee Art Museum, The Knoxville Museum of Art, the Asheville Museum of Art, and The San Francisco Museum of Craft+Design. Besides, her work is in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of Ameican Art’s Renwick Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Craft Portland, OR. 1. When and how did you get interested in weaving? I began weaving as an undergraduate student at the University of Washington in 1999. I wasn’t hooked instantly though. After finishing my degree Prof. Layne Goldsmith invited me to accompany a group from my university to the Jacquard Center in Hendersonville, NC. I met Bethanne Knudsen there, learned how to prepare files for an industrial Jacquard loom and knew instantly this is what I wanted to do. I thought I might go into textile design, but on a
subsequent trip to the Jacquard Center, I met artist Lia Cook who pointed me towards the Graduate MFA program at CCA. It was there that I first worked with a TC-1 loom. The Jacquard just opened up possibilities to weaving that I felt limited by on the floor loom. Furthermore, I felt that the TC-1/TC2 allowed even more flexibility than the industrial Jacquards in terms of the material choices and selection of weave structures. 2. Would you call weaving an art or science? Has your perception of weaving and the possibilities it offers to an artist evolved over the years?