Artist turns fabric into a volcano

Kimry Jelen is best known in the Sisters Country as a painter of horses, but her biggest Central Oregon project to date is in a whole different media.

The Sisters artist just completed a more-than-10-foot-tall volcano made out of painted fabric for a special exhibit at the High Desert Museum. The volcano is the centerpiece of Volcano Country, an exhibit exploring the geological origins of the Central Oregon landscape.

While the installation is unique, Jelen is no stranger to working with fabric: For many years she designed outdoor apparel. Glen Marcusen, exhibit designer for the High Desert Museum, knew Jelen in Portland and remembered her talent with fabric.

"We had a past working together in Portland," Marcusen said. "I just knew that Kimry is a talented person."

"Glen designed the whole installation; I just had one element, which was a 10-and-a-half-foot volcano," Jelen said.

She used commando cloth, a light-blocking fabric commonly used for theatrical curtains, for the slopes of the volcano. She painted the fabric to create a sense of texture, working on the piece 20 percent at a time in her own studio. She used the yoga studio at Sisters Athletic Club to lay the work out like puzzle pieces.

The "lava" shooting up through the core of the volcano is made from dyed silk. The interior lighting shining through the silk creates a mesmerizing effect like that of staring into a camp fire.

"It was very fun," Jelen said. "When I started dyeing the silk... I started to remember the things I liked about working with fabric."

The interior of the volcano is ringed with "touch samples" of various types of volcanic rock.

One slope is penetrated by a "lava tube" that kids like to crawl through.

The exterior rear slope of the volcano runs into a curtain wall that houses a TV running a 20-minute film on volcano activity in the Northwest, including spectacular footage of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.

The installation was not without its challenges. The exhibit could not be secured to the floor, so Marcusen had to work out a tensioning system that would keep the installation in place and in its proper shape.

And putting it all together by deadline was a push. It took five days to install, Marcusen said, "and those weren't eight-hour days."

Volcano Country opened April 9. For more information on the museum, visit http://www.highdesertmuseum.org.