Janice Arnold

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courtesy Janice Arnold

Panels of diaphanous felt.

Panels of diaphanous felt as seen in Janice Arnold’s exhibition "Felt Decoded," Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, 2017.

media release: July 29, 2024 @ 10:00 am - January 5, 2025 @ 4:00 pm

Woolen Clouds by textile artist Janice Arnold will float and flow through the central lobby of the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, trickling into halls and stairwells like an icy breeze. This two-story immersive installation with video elements will offer a surprising contrast to conventional perceptions of felt. In conversation with the exhibition Feel the Beat, Woolen Clouds invites us to consider what wool makes possible. 

It took Arnold a year to craft the nearly 4,000 sq feet of diaphanous felt that comprises the installation. She created this work following her 3.5-year experience as primary caregiver for her elderly parents in her childhood home. Hand-felted with intention and reverence for nomadic traditions and philosophies, these pieces are subtly embedded with universal symbologies of spirals, turbulence, and transformation. 

Woolen Clouds poetically combines art, history, and science to tell tales of pain, growth, beauty, and enlightenment. It brings to physical form the tension between strength and fragility in the cycle of life and death.

This installation has been co-sponsored by the International Projects Office in the International Division. Additional support for this installation comes from the Anonymous Fund.