Photography & Art at the Rock: Featuring Kris Kieper

Photography & Art at the Rock, a monthly exhibit in the lobby of the Split Rock Lighthouse Visitor Center that showcases local artists, landscape and wildlife photographers of the area. For the month of October our featured artist is Kris Kieper. Kris is a needle felting fiber artist and wilderness enthusiast inspired to capture and represent the beauty of the natural world. She focuses on Northern Minnesota landscapes and themes of sunsets, weather, night skies, water, and trees. Needle felting uses specialized barbed needles to push fibers together, causing their scales to tangle and interlock into a matted material known as felt. Needle felted landscape art is essentially painting with layers of colored fiber. Kris strives for realism and is always seeking new ways to utilize the variety of fiber types, textures, colors, needles, and methods to draw viewers into a scene before they realize it’s not a photograph or traditional painting. Kris gravitated to fiber, color, and nature at a young age. She has a BA in Social Environmental Studies, where she studied the impacts of people, technology, and cultural systems on the natural world. In addition to her fiber art, she owns an independent advisory firm that provides strategic and operational guidance to software startup companies. Kris is excited to share her art at Sivertson Gallery in Grand Marais, MN, beginning in late 2024/early 2025. She lives on the Gunflint Trail full-time with her husband and their 9-year-old Labrador Retriever. You can view her complete art portfolio at www.Feltscaping.com. Funding for this exhibit was provided by an “Individual Artist Project Grant made possible in part by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.” Kieper’s show will run from October 1- 31. She will be onsite: October 5, 10 am-6 pm October 19, 10 am-6 pm