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I’m Cheryl Janis—Los Angeles–born, now based in Missoula, Montana. I’m a fiber and mixed media artist, creating luminous works that invite a slower breath and a softer kind of attention.

For years my studio language came through the earth (and the ancestors). I began felting in Taos, New Mexico—an intense high-desert landscape that felt charged with story, portals, and what lives beneath the surface. I’m a student mystic at heart, always listening for what’s hidden and asking what wants to be revealed. I felt guided there by ancestral presence and by a feminine weaver archetype—an energy of protection, pattern, and connection. During a difficult season of deep healing, I stepped away from the work for a time. When I returned in Missoula, the energy felt kinder and more restorative, and that steadiness shaped my Chrysalis series—pieces about protection, passage, and emergence.

My current body of work is called Sacred Windows: ethereal fiber “windows” built with natural and ethical fibers and recycled acrylic, held within a slim acrylic enclosure so light and air become part of the piece. The window isn’t only something you look at—it’s something you feel yourself entering.

Sacred Windows is also where I’m leaning more openly into my identity as a Jewish artist and quiet mystic. In every piece I explore the Hebrew letter Shin—a sacred form often associated with Shaddai (a Divine Name) and the protective presence carried on the mezuzah. I experience Shin as flame and blessing at the threshold: a letter that guards, radiates, and reminds the body to return.

My materials are all natural and ethical: Teeswater wool and Tussah peace silk, sometimes wet-felted into luminous relief and sometimes left unfelted—soft, wild, and airy—then carefully attached within the acrylic structure. I work slowly and intuitively, letting the materials lead: wool gathers, silk catches, fibers resist and then yield. The result is often a quiet radiance—like weather turning into sky, or sky turning into prayer.

Before focusing fully on studio practice, I spent many years designing wellness-oriented interiors and studying how environments shape what we feel. That devotion to restorative space continues here. Because the fiber is protected inside an acrylic enclosure, the exterior can be cleaned for high-traffic settings—making Sacred Windows especially suited for healthcare and senior living environments, including Jewish-focused spaces, where beauty, meaning, and calm can become a form of care.

If something here calls to you, reach out—I’d love to hear from you.