BEYOND CISPUS PASS
Beyond Cispus Pass
Pacific Crest Trail
2023
Fiber, needle-felted wool
20.5x45 inches
In interpreting landscapes, I seek not only to create an image but to honor
an encounter, and that is especially true in feltings like “Beyond Cispus
Pass,” which is drawn from a series of reference images, as well as from
my memory of a moment. As I crossed snowfields in my climb up to
Cispus Pass in the northern Cascades along the Pacific Crest Trail, it was
late in the day, and I was feeling ready to eat dinner and find a place to
camp, even while stopping to take photos and admire the scenery.
However, after gaining the pass and descending into the Cispus Basin, a
high, glacial valley, I found myself so in awe of the world around me that
the desire to make camp was long forgotten.
A wide-format felting, “Beyond Cispus Pass” brings to mind the feeling of
trying to take in a landscape while passing through it, a time when we
consider the human eye’s inadequacy to perceive panoramic views. The
viewer finds themself drawn both to a waterfall in the foreground and,
beyond a line of evergreens, a rocky Cascade ridgeline below a pastel-hued
sky.
