‘Circling Fiber’ is intricate detail, years in the making

The art of long-time Benicia resident Marty Jonas is currently featured at Benicia Public Library. And it was a long time coming together: the work displayed in the show, “Circling Fiber,” spans a period of 10 years.

“I was trying to find a body of work that was cohesive, and looking around I either have squares or circles,” Jonas said. “I do other things, but most of my work seems to fall back on squares and circles.”

Though the central theme centers around circles, the media and techniques are diverse.

Some comes from Jonas’s skills in knitting and crocheting, which she learned at a very young age. “I had three sisters, so my mom taught us to do all of that,” she said.

While Jonas was busy raising her own family, she put the needlecraft away, but when she owned the gym High Energy, a First Street business that she sold in the 1990s, “I had to sit there all day long, and I started to do needlepoint.

“Then I wanted to do more things.” So Jonas studied embroidery by correspondence through the City and Guilds of London Institute in England.

With all of that in her background, the intricate, often tiny detail in Jonas’s work comes as no surprise — look, for example, at a mosaic that is part of her “Color Blind” series that uses small doilies crocheted from thread as the mosaic pieces; or at “Polyhedron 600,” one of her pieces made from metal screen, consisting of 600 pieces of screen folded in origami patterns and woven together.

“I like to do small things, I also like to do time-consuming things,” she said. “I usually work eight to ten hours a day.”

One of the newest pieces in the show is “A Cube of Circles,” which is a cube assembled from round, cotton-covered slide mounts. “I have been collecting strips of fabric for probably 15 years. They come a quarter of an inch wide, and 18 inches long,” she said. “I have probably at least 24-36 grocery bags full.”

“Every once in a while I get on the mood and it’s, ‘Let’s see what we can do to use them up,’ because I’m still getting them!”

Jonas’s “Crocheted Ball” and “Bowling Ball” also incorporate the strips of fabric, and a lot of her felt work reflects the same shapes as her screen polyhedrons.

“After I did the metal work, I decided to create the same forms in felt,” she said. She did the felting and dyeing of all the pieces before constructing them.

The next direction Jonas is taking in her work: a series of highly magnified pollen, created in embroidered applique. The first of the series, “Christmas Box Pollen,” is a part of the new show.

Fibers are and other tactile materials, and “painting” with threads and fabrics are Jonas’ mediums of choice, but she does not paint in the traditional sense. “I will paint if I have to, if it’s necessary for the piece,” she said.

She leaves the painting to her husband, John Jonas, who is also an artist. “He went to the San Francisco Art Institute in the 1950s, then went to work, then retired and went back to the Institute and finished up his degree. He’s been painting ever since.”

If You Go
Marty Jonas’s “Circling Fiber” will be at Benicia Public Library through March 27. More of her work can be viewed at martyjonas.com.