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But ask an Olympia resident, and the answer might be no, despite the fact that Arnold lives and creates her huge textile sculptures in nearby Grand Mound.
This Arts Walk, that’s going to change. For the first time, the nationally known Arnold is the featured artist on the cover of the city’s fall Arts Walk brochure.
The cover work will hang in downtown Olympia this weekend before being moved to the new City Hall.
“It’s nice to be honored and celebrated in the town I call home. I’ve lived here for over 30 years,” Arnold said.
The brochure cover is definitely an honor: The coveted position is jury-selected each year, and involves a city-commissioned piece as well as graphic representation on the brochure for Arts Walk, the biannual event that opens up Olympia’s downtown businesses and galleries for a two-day art street party.
Arnold is no stranger to recognition. With her sculptures that transform handmade and industrial felt to entire otherworldly environments, she’s hung work at New York’s Cooper Hewitt museum, the Portland Art Museum, Bellevue Arts Museum and Portland’s Lumber Room, as well as designed a dragon costume for Los Angeles Opera and a fantasy bar space on a cruise ship for Cirque du Soleil.
Often inspired by nomadic dwellings such as Mongolian yurts or by natural elements like rocks or waves, Arnold works big – which is one reason Olympians haven’t seen much of her during past Arts Walk events.
“In the past, it’s been difficult for me to do Arts Walk because my work is so big and involved. Consequently I think many people in Olympia don’t realize things I’ve done ... around the country,” the artist said.
This Arts Walk is different. Working with Stephanie Johnson, arts and events manager for the city of Olympia, Arnold has created something smaller: a felt window, just 4 feet by 4 feet, and inspired by medieval stained glass. Elegantly curled designs of pale green, royal red and gold sit in symmetry over a silk backing. Like many of Arnold’s sculptures, the whole thing is incredibly tactile while still visually arresting, even in reproduction.
That was essentially the challenge, Arnold said. “The cover becomes an icon of that particular event, so it had to be beautiful graphically from a distance, but also up close,” she said.
It also was a personal challenge for Arnold to create something small enough to hang in City Hall. But there’s a third challenge out there: the material itself.
“I wanted to do something that stretched people’s understanding of felt. It’s often a misunderstood medium, the unsung hero of the art world that’s currently experiencing a Renaissance. This is felt that doesn’t look like felt.”
As well as the “Felt Window,” Arnold also will be create a large installation in the Yoga Loft amid the big room’s soaring, curved wooden beams: 1,500 square feet of ceiling material in a web-like design, hanging like a canopy over an array of felted “rocks.” That installation will be up for another month.
Arnold plans to be there in person tonight, and in and out on Saturday in between visits to other Arts Walk spaces – a treat for South Sound art lovers who might never have seen her or her work.
“Janice is one of those artists better known outside Olympia,” Johnson said. “I think it’s wonderful to highlight someone who lives here but isn’t known.”
Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568, rosemary. ponnekanti@thenewstribune.com
see the cover art
What: See Janice Arnold’s felt art on the Olympia Fall Arts Walk brochure cover, and the installation itself at Arts Walk
Where: Yoga Loft, 219 Legion Way, Olympia
When: 5-10 tonight , noon-7 p.m. Saturday
Cost: Free
Information: 360-709-2678, artswalkolympia.com, jafelt.com, yogaloft.biz
