Chestnut Hill is the kind of community where an internationally acclaimed artist can live in peaceful obscurity for decades. But with Gravers Lane Gallery’s 40-year retrospective, “Lewis Knauss/Recording Time,” now through June 13, locals will finally have an opportunity to discover one of the great talents within our midst.

“We have a long relationship with Lewis and are quite proud that he lives here in Chestnut Hill,” said Barbara Botting, who curated the show. Although the artist’s work has appeared in previous group shows at Gravers Lane Gallery, this is the first time Knauss has had a solo show here. And what a show it is!

Knauss is a fiber artist who weaves hemp, linen, bamboo, twigs, twine and raffia into complex, multi-layered “landscapes.” Some of the pieces on display reveal the natural colors of the material used, others are as brightly colored as a SEPTA map. The standouts are the ones that shimmer in hues of silver and gold such as “Spiked Horizon.”

Another show stopper is “Fog Horizon,” a magical book that appears to be enshrouded in fog. “It was inspired by time I spent on Cape Cod during heavy fog and by a dream I had,” said Knauss. “In my dream, I was reading a book, and branches were growing off them.”

The book is fabricated out of handmade paper. To achieve the illusion of fog, Knauss employed a novel source. Horsehair. “Philadelphia had been a center for weaving horsehair fabric during the Victorian era, but business fell off. However, I found one distributor still in business.”

The titles of Knauss’ work — “Prayer Field,” “Golden Bale,” “Along my Path,” e.g. — signal the derivation of his themes. It’s all about a sense of place. “I grew up in rural Macungie, Pennsylvania, and even when I was in Colorado, I would think back about the landscape of my youth.

“My subject was often specific to Macungie, exploring the simple graphics of plowed fields or memories of the mountainside near my parents’ home. I am increasingly conscious of how we create feelings of comfort from familiar places. Fiber art became my medium for expressing ideas about the importance of landscape.”

In addition to landscape, Knauss’ work is also about meditation. “When my mother died, I decided to look into mindfulness-based stress reduction. My art is a form of mediation because you have given yourself a focus. I do a lot of knotting in my work. When a friend was diagnosed with cancer, I didn’t know what to say, so I made a long piece with knots and said each knot is a prayer.”

His work also relates to the environment. “During my travels, I became a student of the escalating incidents of drought that threaten the West, weakening the ability of trees to withstand stress and increasing the likelihood of fire.”

A 30-year resident of Chestnut Hill who retired from teaching 10 years ago, Knauss is a soft-spoken man who punctuates his sentences with laughter. He works from his home studio.

“But I rarely spend a summer here,” he said. “I go to the Cape, Santa Fe or Aspen. As my subjects extend to new places, I expand my materials, varied to create a textural impression of each environment. My commitment to craft, informed by ongoing research into its traditions, remains fundamental to my processes.”

After receiving his BFA in Art Education at Kutztown University, Knauss completed an MFA at Tyler School of Art. “My first teaching job was at Kent State in Ohio, and I was nostalgic for my hometown,” he said. During his 30 years of teaching at Moore College of Art, where he is now professor emeritus, Knauss traveled widely. Putting on as much mileage as a flight attendant, he visited Israel and Egypt and made multiple visits to Santa Fe, Aspen and Saratoga Springs. However, his art ventured even farther.

Knauss’ work has traveled to Helsinki, Tokyo and Seoul. It is also in the permanent collections of many prestigious museums, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the National Gallery in Melbourne, Australia, and is in the collections of several major corporations.

Along the way, Knauss accumulated extensive grants, fellowships, awards and honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and American Craft Council, among others.

For more information, contact Gravers Lane Gallery, 8405 Germantown Ave. 215-247-1603. GraversLaneGallery.com