Artist inspires wonder

Saturday, April 25, 2009 | 2:07 a.m.

There is something arresting about the artist Sola, and it’s more than her latest creation — a woven tapestry of the Las Vegas Strip and the valley beyond, which measures 11 by 7 1/2 feet.

Maybe it is her choice of yarn, salvaged from sweaters found at local thrift stores. “Sola literally wove Las Vegas from the fabric of the community,” Las Vegas Sun reporter Kristen Peterson wrote in a story that ran Thursday.

Maybe it is her Spartan lifestyle. “I wear the same clothes every day. I just wash them. It frees up the imagination if you don’t have a lot to take care of,” she told Peterson.

Maybe it is her sureness about what she wants out of life. “If I can touch yarn for 10 hours a day then I am in absolute heaven,” she says.

More likely, however, her most arresting quality is ... what? Intensity? Originality? It is so hard to define that perhaps the word we are looking for is a mystery. We are moved to wonder how she does what she does.

Sola, 72, spent more than 8,000 hours creating what she calls “my tapestry.” Wanting to capture the look of Las Vegas before it changes again, she worked every day for three years, selling knit caps to make ends meet. Sometimes her work involved finding just the right nighttime spot — the tops of parking ramps worked well — to count how many floors a hotel has.

Details — air conditioners on rooftops, performers’ names on marquees, motel signs — are so vivid, Peterson wrote, that the tapestry will “blow your mind.”

It will hang at Atlantic Aviation, formerly the Las Vegas Executive Air Terminal, until someone buys it. Proceeds will benefit arts groups and other organizations.

By then Sola will be in another city — her favorites are those that hosted or will host an Olympics. She will create another tapestry there, and no doubt leave others searching for the best way to describe why they find her work — and her — so fascinating.