Jan R Carson
Loveland, Colorado
I work exclusively with silk fabric, creating wall art and kinetic sculpture.
Message
Jan R. Carson is an artist working in Loveland, Colorado. She received an MFA in fibers from Colorado State University. Born in Oklahoma, her education also includes a Bachelor of Art and Bachelor of University Studies from Oklahoma State University, and a student printmaking internship through the OSU Art Department with Universal Limited Art Editions in New York.
Carson is the artist-owner of Moon Lily Mobiles, Inc., specializing in original mobile designs. Her site-specific aerial sculptures have been commissioned by Kaiser Permanente, Centura Health, and Rideout Cancer Center, among others. In 2018, she was awarded the Grand Prize in the Arrow Five Years Out Challenge for her pairing of textile art and LED light. Her work is featured in the books Dimensional Cloth: Sculpture by Contemporary Textile Artists by Andra F. Stanton (2018) and Bojagi: Design and Techniques of Korean Textile Art by Sara Cook (2019). Carson’s five-paneled illuminated work, The Screaming Dreams of Flowers, is now held in the permanent collection of the City of Loveland, Colorado.
Statement
My work responds to environmental instability, examining how disruption in natural systems unsettles our sense of human belonging. Through textile works and sculptural forms, I explore fragility, transformation, and interconnection as shared conditions of human and ecological experience.
I work with lightweight, delicate materials—primarily silk and wire—that carry a sense of the ephemeral. My textile pieces are built through repetitive cutting and stitching, while the sculptures grow from repeated organic forms. Across both, repetition becomes a way of slowing time and examining underlying structures in an effort to discover patterns of formation and resilience.
The tension and movement between loss and renewal are central to my work. Human figures and natural elements appear in unstable states, suggesting vulnerability and limited agency. The narrative remains unresolved, holding open questions of change, adaptation, and endurance.