Claudy Jongstra Interweaves a Passion for the Environment
At this year’s Salone del Mobile in Milan, Reddymade commissioned Claudy Jongstra to wrap an entire room in one of her distinctive wool-felt wall pieces. The idea of the installation, initiated by Google and called “A Space for Being,” was for the tech company to be able to measure how visitors respond to different interiors. The result of the room with Jongstra’s 52-foot-wide tapestry, the tactile, cream-colored Calor, was that it evoked comfort. “Wool humanizes spaces,” Jongstra states.
Studio Claudy Jongstra has brought expansive textile wall coverings to projects big and small—from Mokum restaurant and Lincoln Center in New York to the U.S. Embassy in the Hague and the University of Pennsylvania, where, at 19 by 60 feet, her 2017 Fields of Transformation is her largest installation to date.
Founded in 1995, Studio Claudy Jongstra has brought expansive textile wall coverings to projects big and small—from Mokum restaurant and Lincoln Center in New York to the U.S. Embassy in the Hague and the University of Pennsylvania, where, at 19 by 60 feet, her 2017 Fields of Transformation is her largest installation to date. Two of her artworks are being installed this month at the Wallace Foundation, a national philanthropy based in New York.
“My work fosters an emotional connection to indigenous craft, cultural heritage, and the landscape.”
Originally trained in fashion design, Jongstra makes work intertwined with her study of and concern with the planet. “If you’re serious about a material, you need to understand its connection to the environment,” she says. She keeps her own flock of rare Drenthe Heath sheep, whose curly wool she dyes with woad, madder, and chamomile grown in her biodynamic garden, and then felts into gestural artworks. Her atelier is also a botanical lab and classroom. Students come to absorb the tacit knowledge that comes only with experience, like the ability to feel the quality of wool between their fingers.
