Fiber Forest ||| 4 fiber sculptures – 2 trees, an animal & a cave.
Trousers ||| This work was entirely formed on the loom, not sewn later using a weaving technique called double weave. The form is stuffed to make the volume.
Fire Escape
Orange Maze
Mobius ||| From the series Prehistoric Sites. Janet was interested in archeology and ideas of mounds and histories existing layered on each other.
Shikasita ||| Wire mesh, fibers, ladders to get from one level to the next.
Mesh Enclosures and Spirals
Hanging Box, Rope, cable, aluminum conduit, 12′ x 12′ x 12′
Genie 1, 2, 3
Janet’s woven fiber sculptures to wire cloth/mesh sculptures from the 1970’s and 80’s.
Janet began her art practice as a fiber artist when she attended Antioch College. While at Antioch, she began weaving during residencies at the Asgard School in Denmark and at Penland in North Carolina. She also participated in a semester program of the Experiment in International Living to Ghana where she wove kente cloth at the University of Ghana in Kumasi.
After graduation, Janet continued weaving, pushing the boundaries of fiber beyond its traditional two dimensions, creating three-dimensional works that emphasized form, texture, and geometric pattern, as well as experimentation with natural and chemical dyeing.
When she stopped weaving, Janet began to focus on wire mesh, the woven cloth that she had used for the armatures to make her fiber sculptures 3-dimensional.
Working with wire mesh led to welding steel. Janet began using a welding torch to cut through the surface of the steel to form patterns and openings not unlike those found in the earlier weavings and fabrications in wire mesh.
Weaving still plays a role in Janet’s welded steel sculptures. Her fiber sensibility is evident in the way she uses texture. And she sometimes weaves strips of steel as elements in her sculpture.
