- Artist or Maker
- Christy Matson
United States, Washington, Seattle, born 1979 - Title
- Overshot Variation 3
- Date Made
- 2019
- Medium
- Acrylic and spray paint on paper, cotton, linen, alpaca, cashmere
- Dimensions
- 33 1/2 × 58 3/4 × 2 1/4 in. (85.09 × 149.23 × 5.72 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2019.245
- Collecting Area
- Decorative Arts and Design
- Curatorial Notes
Christy Matson creates woven wall hangings that integrate a painterly sensibility with the structured nature of weaving. Following her graduation from the University of Washington, Matson enrolled in a short course at the Jacquard Center in western North Carolina. On a second visit she met the acclaimed weaver Lia Cook, who recruited her to study at the California College of Arts and Crafts. At CCAC she mastered the art of digital Jacquard weaving, embracing the ability to combine her painterly instincts with advanced technology. Following a 7-year period teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she now lives and works in Los Angeles.
Matson considers herself a painter working in textiles. Her richly colored, ethereal works begin as watercolor studies that she translates into the binary code of the digital Jacquard loom. Overshot Variation 3 embodies several of Matson’s conceptual concerns. Incorporating what she calls "reflexivity" into her work, the background pattern in cream and beige references historic American overshot coverlets. Matson overlays the overshot design with hand-painted paper wefts that interrupt the highly structured pattern of the overshot, lending the work vitality.
Bobbye Tigerman, Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross Curator, Decorative Arts and Design, May 2019
