2022 McKnight Fiber Artist Fellowship Exhibition

Virtual Exhibition

Joan Mondale, Mary Giles, and Community Galleries • January 17 – April 8, 2023

Closing reception: Tuesday, April 4, 5 – 7 pm

Textile Center is proud to present the work of our 2022 McKnight Fiber Artist Fellows Moira Bateman and Blair Treuer.

Bateman creates assemblages from waxed silk, stained with waterway sediments of Minnesota rivers, lakes, and bogs. Her work explores numerous interrelated concepts, from wilderness and waterways to toxicity inflected on the earth, to motherhood and nurturing, to growth and caretaking more broadly. With bogs and watersheds as her collaborators, biology and time are used to describe site–specific conditions contained in the mark–making of these abstract works that document place and render the invisible, visible. A companion exhibition of her work, Bog Etudes, was on view at Form + Content Gallery from January 5 – February 11, 2023.

Treuer is a storyteller from rural, northern Minnesota, who paints with fabric and draws with thread. Her current work explores intimate and spiritual aspects of life and self–identity in a series of works featuring her daughter. The images and often challenging topics they address, are both a celebration and juxtaposition of her white American culture and her husband and family’s traditional indigenous culture, which has been her means of addressing challenging topics through her studio practice. A companion exhibition of her work, Portraits: An Identity Exploration, was on view at Great River Arts Center from January 1 – March 1, 2023.

“Textile Center is thrilled to present the work of our 2022 McKnight Fiber Artist Fellows in these exhibitions in our Textile Center galleries. Bateman’s unwavering dedication to a practice focused on sustainability, whether it be her work in landscape architecture or eco–conscious art and place making that has been the foundation of her work all year, and the fellowship gift has supported her pursuit of new directions in the studio. Treuer, though her creative practice over time was not always focused on formally identifying as an artist and participating in the contemporary art world, has pushed her work in the realm of portraiture to capture the human spirit and essence of family in a highly personalized way, through innovative means and incredible motivation. Both artists have proliferated in their studio practices this past year with the support of the McKnight Fellowships. In addition, we are excited to support the work of their companion exhibitions through our stewardship of this program,” says Tracy Krumm, Textile Center’s Director for Artistic Advancement.

Funding for this program is provided by the McKnight Foundation. Textile Center is honored to be a McKnight Artist Fellowships program partner.

(Featured artwork: Detail of To Become a Flower by Blair Treuer [left] and Detail of Passage by Moira Bateman [right])

All photos by Rik Sferra.

McKnight Fiber Artist Discussion Series

In this virtual conversation in February 2023, 2022 McKnight Fiber Artist Fellows Moira Bateman and Blair Treuer were joined by special guest Michelle Millar Fisher, Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

In the Gallery

Photos by Rik Sferra

Moira Bateman’s Etudes: Watersheds, Bogs, Kayaks

Etudes: Watersheds, Bogs, Kayaks strives to preserve the peat bogs of Northern Minnesota by singing their unsung stories. These beautiful, biodiverse landscapes comprise 10% of Minnesota geography and provide essential habitat for myriad plants and animals. Peatlands are also climate heroes, storing 30% of the Earth’s soil carbon while covering only 3% of the Earth’s surface.

In this new work, I explore the natural pigments of earth, plants, land, and water through silk and wax. These assemblages are stained with the natural sediments, tannins, and iron found in waterways to portray abstractions of time, history, mud, life cycles, the intersection between the toxicity inflected on the Earth, and the eternal work of mothering and nurturing.

Minnesota is home to 90,000 miles of shoreline around its plentiful lakes, wetlands, peatlands, rivers, and streams. Minnesota’s wet-lands and waterways are my primary collaborators. To honor these sacred partnerships, I embrace the primal, biological, durational, and uncontrollable aspects of making. My instinct is trusted when leaving silk to soak for weeks, months, or years in rivers, lakes, and bogs, allowing the secrets of these places to stain the silk.

Ideas of cloth and memory are part of the conceptual basis of the work, asserting that silk becomes imbued with the life of the bog or lake and can hold that memory within its fibers. This work is a celebration of this beautiful place known by its original Dakota peoples as Mni Sota Makoce, the “land where the water reflects the clouds.” Ultimately, I hope the work tells part of the complex story of these wild places that hold much of the bio-diversity remaining on Earth. Protecting and preserving this biodiversity is an essential component to facing climate change and keeping Earth hospitable to life.

moirabateman.com

Passage
Peace silk, tannin and iron, thread, wax
$1000

Floe
Peace silk, tannin and iron, thread, wax
$5500

Remainder
Peace silk, lake bottom markings, tannin and iron, thread, wax
$1000

Vessel No. 1
Peace silk, thread, wax, birch wood, caning
$6500

Vestige No. 1
Peace silk, tannin and iron, wax
$1000

Vestige No. 2
(pictured right)
Peace silk, bog mud, mud dye, thread, wax
$1400

Vestige No. 3
(pictured left)
Peace silk, bog mud, mud dye, thread, wax
$1400

Vestige No. 4
Peace silk, tannin and iron, wax
$1000

Vestige No. 6
(foreground)
Peace silk, bog mud, mud dye, wax
$1800

Echo Lake No. 1
Peace silk, tannin and iron, thread, wax
$4000

Bog Etude No. 4
Peace silk, bog mud, mud dye, thread, wax
$6500

Bog Etude No. 5
Peace silk, tannin and iron, wax
$3000

Blair Treuer’s Becoming: The Transition from Childhood to Womanhood

I am a storyteller from rural Minnesota, who made an unusual entrance into this craft. My children’s participation in a traditional Native American ceremony required me to make blankets as a part of their spiritual offering, and the process was very spiritual for me. Because it was the only way I could contribute as a non-nativewoman, I poured everything I had into these offerings. Being a creative person, I didn’t make traditional block quilts. My blankets pictorially depicted the Native American names gifted to my children when they were born. After a decade of creating blankets for private spiritual ceremonies, I transitioned to creating portraits in 2018.

With this body of work, I was captivated by the ceremonial rite of passage my daughter went through as a Native American when she got her “Moon,” her first menstrual period. It was celebrated as sacred. She…was celebrated as sacred. It was discussed as a part of life, as a part of the natural world, and she was told how powerful she is as a woman. Not just the power to give life through her womb but the power, influence, and responsibility she has with regard to children younger than her and elders older than her, her peers, and with her romantic/sexual partners. She is told that it is her responsibility as a woman to look after her community and to play an active role regarding the health and safety of the community. And she is told that her power is so strong that its energy could influence the natural world around her (including the people in it) so she should be thoughtful and intentional about her impact, down to every step she takes on this Earth.

Becoming: The Transition from Childhood to Womanhood is a fantastical story celebrating my 13 year-old daughter’s journey and ceremonial rite of passage into womanhood, and thus into her power. Important revelations in this series involve but are not limited to the following themes: our relationships to the natural world and the relevance of imagination; cultural views, attitudes, and communication regarding the physical transitions of the female body; definitions of womanhood and attitudes towards femininity; and ultimately the teachings we share with our daughters about what it means to have a female body and how to protect it in today’s society.

This body of work is a celebration and validation of the feminine in all its forms and in all genders. Nurturance, sensitivity, supportiveness, gentleness, warmth, cooperativeness, expressiveness, humility, empathy, affection, decoration, and/or being emotional, kind, helpful, devoted, and understanding are all traits that have been cited as stereotypically feminine. Some have suggested that feminine traits are contrived and enforced by the patriarchy, which interprets these characteristics only as husband and child focused rather than community or globally focused, thus reinforcing the domesticity of the feminine and ignoring and demeaning the value of feminine leadership styles. This collection of portraits expresses and celebrates the value of femininity and its relevance to the health and wellbeing of a society. It elevates its expressions in leadership. Though this exhibition explicitly discusses and portrays the female body, it is essentially proposing that “our”–meaning every BODY…male, female, transgender, non-conforming–is sacred. Our blood is sacred. And no one has the right to deny our sanctity. In a world that insists that power, relevance, significance, and worthiness is something you earn, cultivate, or fight for…I’m proposing that it’s something within you, simply because you exist.

You are a sacred being.

blairtreuer.com

To Become a Deer
Fabric, thread, metal framework
POR

To Become a Flower
Fabric, thread, metal framework
POR

To Become a Chipmunk
Fabric, thread, metal framework
POR

To Become a Bee
Fabric, thread, metal framework
POR

To Become a Tree
Fabric, thread, metal framework
POR

To Become a Fish
Fabric, thread, metal framework
POR

To Become a Snake
Fabric, thread, metal framework
POR

To Become the Sun
Fabric, thread, metal framework
POR

To Become a Bird
Fabric, thread, metal framework
POR

To Become a Wolf
Fabric, thread, metal framework
POR

To Become a Spider
Fabric, thread, metal framework
POR