Christy Matson
The LA-Based Artist discusses color, creative problem-solving, and new ways to make art during the pandemic
JEUNE OTTE: We are such big fans of your work, can you describe it for us?
CHRISTY: I think about what I do as both painting and drawing together with textile making in the broadest sense of the word. I work with a Jacquard loom that allows me to translate drawings, paintings, any kind of marks that I make on paper into woven textiles.
JO: And you often use surplus or deadstock fabric in your work, right?
CHRISTY: Yeah, I work almost entirely with either mill ends or leftovers from the textile industry… kind of like Heiji and Elise are doing, actually. It’s the idea that if you can get your hands on really small quantities of things, you can make something really beautiful from what a larger company or corporation would consider to be waste.JO: Do you feel like having finite resources lends itself to more interesting designs or unexpected designs?
CHRISTY: Unexpected; yes for sure. I think working within those parameters lends itself to creative problem solving. And it also allows or it forces things to never become formulaic. I think some people might consider this approach a limitation but I find so much potential and inspiration in the ability to extend the lifecycle of a material. JO: Since you work with textiles, it seems like you would be very particular when it comes to your own clothes. What is your wardrobe like?
CHRISTY: I tend to like things that I can wear over and over and over again. And I hold onto items of clothing for a very long time. I still own (and wear) the same jean jacket I bought on a road trip through Montana in the late 90s! I gravitate to things I know I can wear in every situation. So clothing that will suit me in the studio, but if I'm gonna meet a friend for dinner on the way home, I can totally show up in that as well. I definitely appreciate natural fibers and love a great textured fabric. I don’t think anything in my closet is made of synthetics. We cold wash and hang dry all our clothing which helps preserve the longevity of garments and is also gentler on the environment. 
JO: How does the Mina dress stack up?
CHRISTY: It’s beautiful and has so much movement! The linen itself is so insanely soft. I'm working with linen now in the studio, and the warps I'm using are really stiff so that was the first thing I was struck by. The dress is really surprising though because it is so soft but also so thick. The quality of the linen is truly luxurious. I probably have no business wearing anything white, but (laughs) then maybe I'll just dye it once it gets dirty and stained with paint, you know? This dress is the the type of thing that I would wear every day.JO: What are you making with your not-so-soft linen?
CHRISTY: So right now, I'm working with some deadstock linen. I’ve been painting on that and then painting on some paper yarn and kind of weaving it all together. In the process I'm getting these very atmospheric sorts of marks in the background and then, these abstract bubbles of color on top. Over the course of the pandemic, I've carved out out this new way of working where I paint marks onto both directions of threads before they're woven. It sort of developed out of the real-world logistics of having a kid doing remote school while I was also in the studio. And so, what I was finding was I'd have these short bursts of time and I was looking for ways that I could kind of make a maximum impact in that short period of time. I don't know. I'm still sort of seeing it through. I don't really have a way to articulate [this new process] quite yet because it's still so new and I’m very much still “in it.”
JO: That really speaks to our team. Many of us have had to supervise remote school this past year and find different ways to manage our time and get everything done.
CHRISTY: SO many of us are involved in care work this year, whether it's taking care of young children or older relatives or just, you know, your small business, whatever it is. We were all thrust very abruptly into a different style of caretaking than many of us were ever accustomed to. And I do think that it's really important to acknowledge the impact that the pandemic has had on women (and mothers) in particular.JO: You seem to wear a lot of black & white, yet your work is filled with color. What’s your relationship to color?
CHRISTY: I think that living in Northeast LA, you get used to a certain harshness to the quality of light here. Everything feels so pummeled by the sun all the time. It all feels a little bit washed out. But then you do get shocks of color, these surprising little bursts of neon or whatever. We wrapped up Jacaranda season here in June and thats a two-week period where the entire city just explodes in purple, and then it's gone. It's so fast, you blink and you miss it. Or, you have these bleak concrete expanses, and then you'll just have this explosion of bougainvillea in the middle of it, which is neon pink or orange. And, for me, there's, kind of metaphors about resilience and persistence in all of that, that I find really inspirational on a personal level but also artistically. So I think the colors I work with are instep with how I process the world around me. I find if I’m dressed in a lot of color its visually confusing or competitive with what I’m doing in the studio and so its easier to just stick with blacks, whites and neutrals.PHOTOS BY Emma Louise Swanson
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