Claudy Jongstra’s Counter Currents

In Counter Currents, Claudy Jongstra invites us into a space where art breathes with the pulse of the natural world. Opening at et galerie in La Jolla, California, this quietly powerful exhibition unfolds as a series of large-scale textile works that shimmer with the textures, colours, and narratives of a landscape deeply cared for and deliberately cultivated.

For over three decades, Jongstra has built her practice on a foundation of material intimacy and environmental reciprocity. From her biodynamic farm in Friesland, The Netherlands, she tends a flock of indigenous Drenthe Heath sheep and cultivates heirloom dye plants, ensuring that the fibres and pigments used in her work are not merely sustainably sourced, but part of a regenerative cycle.

Claudy Jongstra, Early Blossom, 2025 (Detail). Drenthe Heath wool, organic silk, and hand-spun yarns. Naturally dyed with walnut, madder root, weld.

Each piece begins with the landscape: wool carded from her sheep, dye extracted from madder roots or weld blossoms, all transformed through traditional felting and dyeing techniques revived and reimagined for a contemporary context. The works in Counter Currents speak softly, yet insistently, to the urgent questions of our time...

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Image Credits:

LEAD: Claudy Jongstra, Tangible Transformation 4/4, 2023. Drenthe Heath wool, organic silk. Naturally dyed with coreopsis, nettle, woad, weld, madder root, walnut, and Burgundian Black.

All other images as credited in photo captions.