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Fellowship Period:
Marjorie Fedyszyn
Marjorie Fedyszyn addresses the universal experiences of loss and human vulnerability, and the palpable tension around it, through her sculptural practice in textiles. Careful attention to process and the inherent properties of materials informs her creative vocabulary for this work, which simultaneously expresses ideas from broad environmental concern to personal grief and introspection. Using traditional craft techniques such as paper making, hand stitching, and felt making, Fedyszyn’s forms and installations emerge as emotional histories that investigate ideas of control and the realms of the personal and the global. Her work has been exhibited regionally and throughout the US, including the Silverwood Park Gallery in St. Anthony, Hopkins Center for the Arts, South Dakota Museum of Art, Duluth Art Institute, Sebastopol Arts Center in CA, and the Yeiser Art Center in Paducah, KY. Fedyszyn has been a Jerome Visual Arts Fellow and a Jerome Fiber Artist Project Grantee, as well as having received two Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grants to support her work.
marjoriefedyszyn.com
Read about Marjorie’s recent installation this spring at Silverwood Park, on MPLS.COM
Delina White
Delina White is a Native apparel designer, beadwork artist, and enrolled member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. Grounded in the traditional designs of the Great Lakes Woodland Anishinaabeg, her artist-designed fabrics utilize contemporary materials in her wearable works. As an intergenerational, cultural knowledge keeper, White communicates the values and beliefs of the original people of the Great Lakes Woodlands as passed from her grandmother and her grandmother before her, using apparel as a catalyst to wider approaches of learning, research, and creative exploration with her community. She has produced and participated in numerous fashion shows including Northern Lights: A Native Nation Fashion Night in Minneapolis, the SW Association of Indian Arts fashion shows, and Walker Art Center’s 2Spirit Fashion Show. White was recognized as one of six Star Tribune 2019 Artists of the Year for her work with Hearts of Our People, Minneapolis Institute of Arts’ landmark exhibition, and was named a 2020 Artist in Business Leadership Fellow by the First Peoples Fund. She has also been recipient of a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship and a US Artists Fellowship in Traditional Arts.
iamanishinaabe.com
Read about Delina’s recent project, Northern Lights, A Native Nations Fashion Night Tuesday, April 25, at the Machine Shop in Minneapolis, during Fashion Week 2023 on KAXE.ORG and KARE11
Andrew Gardner
Andrew Gardner is a curator and writer based in New York. His work focuses on a wide range of topics in material culture, design, and craft history, including: post-WWII textile design and the fiber art movement; 19th-century New York’s oyster culture; and the automobile age’s impact on 20th century visual culture. His article “Lily-White” for the Museum of Modern Art’s post has led to an ongoing research project into the life and career of designer A. Joel Robinson, whose textiles were recently rediscovered as the first by a Black designer to enter MoMA’s collection.
Gardner has organized a number of exhibitions, the most recent of which include Taking a Thread for a Walk (2019), The Value of Good Design (2019), and Automania (2021) at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has also written on the monumental fiber-based sculptures of Mrinalini Mukherjee and contributed to exhibition publications focused on the radical contemporary ceramics of Takuro Kuwata and the furniture designs of Gae Aulenti, one of only a handful of women architects to find success in postwar Italy. He has lectured widely, served on the jury for the 2021 Museum of Arts and Design Burke Prize, and previously worked at the Museum of Modern Art, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and the Bard Graduate Center.
@gardnerae
Beili Liu
Beili Liu is a visual artist who creates site-responsive installations and performances that address themes of migration, cultural memory, labor, social, and environmental concerns. She has exhibited extensively, in locations including Norway, Finland, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Lithuania, France, Belgium, Poland, China, Taiwan and across the United States. Liu has received numerous fellowships and awards, including the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship (2022-2024), the Pollock Prize for Creativity (2022), the Fulbright Arctic Chair, Norway (2021-2022), the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant (2016), the National Endowment for the Arts Challenge America Grant through the Museum of Southeast Texas (2014). In 2018, Liu was honored by the Texas Legislature as the Texas State Artist in 3D medium. Liu received the Distinction Award at the Kaunas Biennial, Lithuania (2011), and a San Francisco Mayor’s Award (2008) for her contribution to cultural exchange.
Liu’s work has been featured by PBS Arts in Context series, Sculpture Magazine, Art in America, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, ArtNews, Art Papers, ArtSlant, The Huffington Post, Climate Progress, Public Art Review, Sacchi Review, UK, Helsinki Sanomat News, Finland, Morgenbladet, Norway, China Daily, Yishu, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Hamburg Abendblatt, and Vita (Life) Magazine, Italy, among others.
Born in Jilin, China, Liu lives and works in Austin, Texas. She received her MFA degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and is the Leslie Waggener Endowed Professor in the College of Fine Arts and a Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
(Philip Rogers, photo credit)
www.beililiu.com
Erica Warren
Erica Warren is a curator and scholar, working with collections, in museums, and teaching. She is currently the editor of Craft Quarterly, the James Renwick Alliance for Craft’s magazine. Her area of specialization within decorative arts and design histories centers on the late nineteenth century through the present day with a focus on alternative modernisms. Research pursuits include the human and ecological costs that attended industrial innovations in modern textile production; color theory, synthetic dyes, and modernists with intermedial art practices such as Marguerite Zorach; the American designer, entrepreneur, and weaver Dorothy Liebes; and the unbounded practices of contemporary artists working with textiles.
Her essay “Fission: Design and Mentorship in the Dorothy Liebes Studio” will be published (summer 2023) in the catalog accompanying the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s exhibition A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes. In 2021, her essay “Beyond Weaving: Transdisciplinarity and the Bauhaus Weaving Workshop,” appeared in Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, and the year before, she edited and contributed to the catalogue Bisa Butler: Portraits (2020). From 2016-2022, Warren was a curator of textiles at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she organized numerous installations, including the critically acclaimed exhibitions Bisa Butler: Portraits and Weaving Beyond the Bauhaus. As a complement to her curatorial pursuits, she has taught courses at the University of Chicago, Drexel University, and the Tyler School of Art, Temple University.
www.ericawarrenphd.com
Fiber art is thriving in Minnesota, and the field’s growth as an artistic discipline now includes the McKnight Artist Fellowships Program, which provides two $25,000 fellowships to be awarded each year to individual midcareer fiber artists living and working in Minnesota.
In addition to the $25,000 unrestricted award and public recognition in support of their studio work and practice, McKnight Fiber Artist Fellows receive:
- Critiques/studio visits with curators and critics from the field.
- Exhibition at the end of the fellowship period in the galleries at Textile Center.
- Professional photographic documentation of work at the end of the fellowship period.
- Participation in a public discussion that features fellows and an invited critic or curator.
- Professional development support, such as attending conferences, workshops, and marketing advice for their work; plus consultation sessions from artist career consultants at Springboard for the Arts on topics of your choice.
- Participation in a 1 – 2 week artist residency in partnership with McKnight and Artist Communities Alliance.
- Membership to Textile Center and access to Textile Center’s resources, including library of more than 32,000 books and periodicals, state-of-the-art dye lab, and artisan shop opportunities.
The intent of the McKnight Fellowships for Fiber Artists is to recognize and support talented Minnesota fiber and textile artists whose work is of exceptional artistic merit. These fellowships are in support of individual artists who are at a career stage beyond emerging. Fiber Artists, as defined for the purposes of this fellowship, are artists who use textile and fiber arts materials, processes, histories, traditions, and/or sensibilities in their artistic practice throughout the conception, execution, and resolution of their work. The fellowships are funded by the McKnight Foundation and administered by Textile Center.
ABOUT THE MCKNIGHT ARTIST FELLOWSHIPS PROGRAM
Founded on the belief that Minnesota thrives when its artists thrive, the McKnight Foundation’s Arts & Culture program is one of the oldest and largest of its kind in the country. Support for individual working Minnesota artists has been a cornerstone of the program since it began in 1982. The McKnight Artist Fellowships Program provides annual, unrestricted cash awards to outstanding mid-career Minnesota artists in 15 different creative disciplines. Program partner organizations administer the fellowships and structure them to respond to the unique challenges of different disciplines. Currently the foundation contributes about $2.8 million per year to its statewide fellowships. To learn more about McKnight Artist Fellowships, visit: mcknight.org/artistfellowships.
ABOUT THE MCKNIGHT FOUNDATION
The McKnight Foundation, a Minnesota-based family foundation, advances a more just, creative, and abundant future where people and planet thrive. Established in 1953, the McKnight Foundation is deeply committed to advancing climate solutions in the Midwest; building an equitable and inclusive Minnesota; and supporting the arts in Minnesota, neuroscience, and international crop research. mcknight.org
A focus on racial equity is at the heart of the McKnight approach to funding. Along with Textile Center, our organizations value diversity and equity, seeking to be inclusive and accessible to all applicants. We welcome and encourage applications from artists representing diverse cultural perspectives.