Matt Nowak Felting, paper cast, oil, pen & ink Matt is a forester who works as the Natural Resources Specialist for Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He is naturally involved with many aspects of his work that also lends themselves well to the arts. For example, Matt uses sheep to help with vegetation control. The supply of raw wool enabled him to explore the artistic uses for wool. He learned to clean and process the raw wool and then to hand-spin, dye, and weave or felt the wool into fiber art. Matt also is trained to observe wildflowers, trees, landscapes, etc. and to capture those images on paper through sketching and drawing, oil, etc. He learned to take those images and make them into another art from like paper casts. He has also learned to use natural fibers from bison, llamas and alpacas, rabbits and goats to blend with the sheep wool. Matt satisfies his sensual needs by working with his eyes and his hands to take natural things like wool, clay and cotton fibers and oils and make them into fine art and wearable art. As a forester, Matt has the pleasure of working in a sensually-rich environment all the time. He is also lucky to be able to manipulate the environment through practices like burning, grazing, farming, timber cutting, etc. and then to be able to observer the changes made over time. Matt has been the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, forester for over 25 years and has observed the changes over all those years. He also has recorded many of those images of the natural resources through photography and sketching and drawing and is now beginning to express though images through art. His art reflects at least 200 years of regional history going back to the grape leaves (Ampelopsis) collected by Captain Meriweather Lewis on September 14, 1806 on his return from the Pacific Ocean during his epic exploration of the American West with William Clark. His art takes us up to the present-day with images of purple cone flowers and wearable art made from wool. We hope that you can share his positive attitude about nature through Matt’s art. |
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