Textile Center invited guests to join it for an evening celebrating 2025 McKnight Fiber Artist Fellows Amber Jensen + Rick Kagigebi.

Amber Jensen

Amber M. Jensen, Minneapolis, is a weaver, painter, and teacher who blends traditional techniques with improvisation to draw new stories out of thread and cloth with each piece she makes. Jensen began her journey into textiles nearly two decades ago with the creation of one-of-a-kind backpacks, which evolved into distinctive wearable art. Through her daily art practice, she creates weavings and paintings embellished with stories and symbols, inspired by nature around her and the through-line traced from her ancestors’ blankets to her work today. Whether people share the same language or not, she believes woven cloth carries history across cultures.

Jensen received a 2009 Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist Grant from the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and has exhibited internationally, from Tokyo to Paris. In 2023, she presented a solo exhibition at the Watermark Art Center in Bemidji. Her work will appear in an upcoming touring exhibition organized by the Middle American Arts Alliance and the Scandinavian-American Foundation, beginning in New York City and traveling through the Midwest with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Dedicated to sharing her love of weaving, Jensen has led projects with All My Relations Arts in Minneapolis, the Blandin Foundation in Grand Rapids, the 2024 Art Shanty Projects, and the North House Folk School in Grand Marais. Jensen currently works out of her studio in Minneapolis.

Rick Kagigebi

Rick Kagigebi, Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe, creates appliquéd mural blankets that incorporate elements such as direction, movement, time, space, 3-dimensional layering, and Ojibwe culture. From sketching to sewing to hand-tying, he considers the person who will receive the blanket, asking what can be provided through the blanket in order for them to have a good life?

Kagigebi made his first blanket, a four-pointed star, on his grandmother’s treadle sewing machine in 1980. Hundreds of blankets followed for ceremony, gifting, commission, and exhibitions. In his 30s and living at the Duluth YWCA without a sewing machine, he hand-stitched appliqué designs using an embroidery hoop. He began showing his work publicly in 2018, having previously limited it to ceremony gifts and private commissions. Of this work, he says, “Why do I do what I do? Because the people are worth doing it for.”

His blankets have been exhibited in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota, including All My Relations Gallery (Minneapolis), Watermark Arts Center (Bemidji), and the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts (Cedarburg). Kagigebi has received support from Region 2 Arts Council’s Anishinaabe Arts Initiative and two grants from the Lake Region Arts Council, as well as a Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Support for Individuals grant in 2023 and an Arts Experiences grant in 2024. He resides in Detroit Lakes.