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2026 McKnight Fiber Artist Fellows:
Fellowship Period:
Joe Savage
Amy Usdin
Joe Savage (Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe) is a distinguished quillworker whose creative practice is built on decades of research and experimentation. Over time, quillwork has become a grounding and self-defining aspect of his identity. He began by visually studying and dissecting historic artifacts, moving into hands-on experimentation with largely inaccessible and undocumented processes (think before computers and the internet). Savage’s practice has expanded with other skills adapted through trial and error, including materials gathering, natural dyeing and tanning.
Amy Usdin creates weavings and hand constructed textiles that hover between the past and present, highlighting fragile ties between humans and the environment. After years working as an art director, Usdin fully committed to her creative practice and has been recognized for her accomplishments with numerous residencies, grants, and fellowships. Her work is rooted in early explorations of fiber arts in the 1970s—an interest she could not have known would become an all-consuming artistic path decades later.
Julia Bryan-Wilson
Julia Bryan-Wilson, Professor of Contemporary Art and LGBTQ+ Studies and core faculty, teaches contemporary art and gender studies at Columbia University. She is the award-winning author of several books, including Fray: Art and Textile Politics (2017) and Louise Nevelson’s Sculpture: Drag, Color, Join, Face (2023). As Curator-at-Large at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, she co-curated several exhibitions, including Queer Histories (with Adriano Pedrosa and André Mesquita, 2024). She opened two shows in November 2025—GUTSY: On Feminist Infrastructure (at MSN Warsaw) and Lotty Rosenfeld: Disobedient Spaces (at the Wallach Art Gallery, organized with Natalia Brizuela). In 2024, Bryan-Wilson served as President of the International Jury of the 60th Venice Biennale.
Julia Bryan-Wilson at Columbia University
@juliaqbw1
Jill D’Alessandro
Jill D’Alessandro is the director and curator of the Avenir Institute of Textile Arts and Fashion at the Denver Art Museum. Prior to joining the DAM, she served as the curator in charge of costume and textile arts at The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco for over 20 years. D’Alessandro has both published and organized numerous exhibitions on a diverse variety of subjects, ranging from world textile traditions to twentieth- and twenty-first century fashion design. Serving as a curator of global textile collections has greatly informed her worldview and she is expressively interested in transglobal fashion narratives and in the study of textile arts as a vehicle to draw connections across cultures.
Jill D’Alessandro at DAM
@jillkdalessandro
Deborah Valoma
Deborah Valoma is an artist, writer, and professor emerita at California College of the Arts, where she served as Chair of the Textiles Program and Director of Fine Arts. She developed and taught a series of graduate and undergraduate courses on textile history and theory through multiple theoretical lenses including embodiment, materiality, and indigeneity. She has authored publications on related topics including Scrape the Willow Until It Sings: The Words and Work of Basketmaker Julia Parker (Heyday, Berkeley, 2013); “When Linen Remembers” (Material Intelligence, edited by Glenn Adamson, 2021); “Alluring Monotony + Luminous Threads” (Textile: Journal of Cloth and Culture, 2022); and “Thread Memory” (23:5, Hrant Dink Foundation, Istanbul, 2026). Valoma is currently working on a multi-year interdisciplinary project that addresses the role of textiles as signifiers of ethnic identity and agents of cultural continuity in the Armenian diaspora. This body of work was initiated when she inherited over one-hundred heirloom textiles from her grandmother—including Armenian needlelace, a tradition practiced by her foremothers.
deborahvaloma.com
@deborahvaloma
Coming in the Fall of 2026!
Joe Savage, 2026 McKnight Fiber Artist Fellow
More about Joe Savage coming soon!
Amy Usdin, 2026 McKnight Fiber Artist Fellow
More about Amy coming soon!
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, 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, mentors, 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 or presentation of their work and creative practices.
- Professional development support, such as attending conferences, workshops, and marketing advice for their work.
- Consultation sessions from artist career consultants at Springboard for the Arts on topics of their choice, related to the arts and creative practice.
- 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.