Join us for this dynamic series of events celebrating the powerful world of mending!
April 18, 2023 – Late 2023

Mining Mending: Rethink, Reuse, Revive explores and celebrates the many facets of mending as a part of creative practice. By stitching with conceptual and structural integrity, using recycled materials as art supplies, patching with purpose, and honoring of labor through repair, repurposing, and renewal, the powerful message and act of restoration and rejuvenation through mending serves as means for artists (and community activists) to express their positions on social, economic, and environmental justice.

A cohort of internationally recognized artists, writers, and historians has come together exhibit, teach, and talk about mending – rethink, reuse, revive — as both physical process and metaphor. Program exhibitions, discussions, and workshops are designed to focus on topics from healing practice to social practice, to economic and environmentally informed practice, and to building and maintaining bridges to textile traditions. Through a dynamic schedule of program activities, our intention is to engage a broad range of modalities and invest in new relationships to strengthen our fiber art community.

Join us for an event from our growing list! Registration links and activities will continue to be added for June – September.  Click on the tabs below for more details.

COMING UP:

PAST EVENTS:

  • Art Speaks: Judy Frater, Folk Embroideries of Kutch, Thursday, May 18, 12 pm CT on Zoom
  • Art Speaks: Asif Shaikh, Resurgence, Thursday, June 1, 11 am CT/9:30 pm IST on Zoom

The events above are low-cost or free to attend. Related workshops can be found on the WORKSHOPS tab below.

(Header image: detail of Mended Pastry Bag by Celia Pym)
"Please Rate Your Experience" by Lisa Kokin

Mining Mending

April 25 – July 15, 2023 • Joan Mondale & Community Galleries

Artist reception: Tuesday, June 6, 5:30 – 7 pm

Featuring the work of Rachel Breen, Brooks Harris Stevens, Lisa Kokin, Amy Meissner, Mark Newport, Celia Pym, Catherine Reinhart, Winnie van der Rijn, and The Collective Mending Sessions

The metaphors of mending have been endlessly mined and continue to influence the ideas of generations of makers and artists. We are thrilled to present the work of these contemporary artists who explore the theme of mending as the conceptual and technical basis for their artistic practices. Materials are mined for reuse and repurposed; materials are dismantled and objectified; holes are both accidental and intentional, some left, some repaired; cloth acts like skin, to be cut or torn; stitches act to heal; scars remain; power is questioned; things are (re)made to live another day, often to serve another purpose. Join us to celebrate the work of these artists who inspired a spring and summer full of programming!

Join us for an special Art Speaks presentation with Judy Frater on Folk Embroideries of Kutch, Thursday, May 18 at NOON.  For more information and to register, click HERE.

Resurgence: Revival of Indian Embroidery

April 18 – June 7, 2023 • Mary Giles Gallery

Asif Shaikh

Join us for this special exhibit of work by Asif Shaikh, from Ahmedabad, India. Shaikh’s incredible embroideries, research, and writing create a bridge between East and West, old and new, tradition and innovation. His intricate and labor intensive artisan stitching “mends” a historic gap in Indian craft through his revival of Mughal (court) embroidery. Textile Center is honored to share this work with our audience, from April 18 – June 7.

Thanks to Mary Anne Wise for introducing us to Asif’s work and to Shelley Wells for delivering, curating, and installing this exhibition.

Join us for a special Art Speaks presentation with Asif, who will join us from Ahmedabad, on Resurgence and his recent work, Thursday, June 1 at 11 am on Zoom (this is 9:30 pm IST/Ahmedabad). For more information and to register, click HERE.

Vintage Kantha Quilts

April 25 – July 20, 2023 • Library Gallery

Collection on loan from Cultural Cloth, Maiden Rock, WI

“Kantha, making whole again that which was fragmented or broken.”     Crafts Museum, New Delhi

This rotating exhibition of vintage kantha quilts from West Bengal, created using layers of soft recycled fabrics held together using small straight running stitches– mended with additional layers of fabric as necessary due to time and wear– is on loan from Cultural Cloth in Maiden Rock, WI. Also on view in the library is a collection of books on the subject of stitching and mending, in support of the Mining Mending program.

Join us for Art Speaks: “What is Kantha, Anyway?” with Pika Ghosh, Friday, June 23, 12 pm CT on Zoom!

Art Speaks: African Blues – My Life in Indigo with Gasali Adeyemo

5 pm CT, Tuesday, June 13, 2023 • Hybrid – In person and virtual

Join Textile Center in welcoming artist Gasali Onireke Adeyemo to the Twin Cities for a special public lecture to accompany his 4-day workshop (sold out) on Adire resist dyeing with indigo.

In this hybrid in-person / online presentation, Gasali will tell the story of how fiber art came into his life. He will explain the three different techniques that he uses in his own work — adire eleko, batik, and tie-dye — and share the rich history of textile design and significance of indigo for the Yoruba culture.

In person participants will have the opportunity to shop Gasali’s trunk show before and after the Art Speaks conversations.

REGISTER HERE!

Art Speaks: “What is Kantha, Anyway?” with Pika Ghosh

12 pm CT, Friday, June 23, 2023 • Virtual, via Zoom

Join Textile Center in welcoming scholar Pika Ghosh for a talk on the rich history of kantha textiles and related themes from her latest book Making Kantha, Making Home (2020). 

Pika will discuss kantha, a corpus of Bengali textiles that traditionally have been understood as quilted cotton textiles created by women using repurposed white cloth from old and worn garments. To make kantha, women adorned these mended and smoothed surfaces with a wide range of distinctive patterns of running stitches. Some elaborate ones display figures and narratives, sometimes constructed from colored threads, pulled from the borders of old saris. They are associated with domesticity, thrift, virtue, and even Bengali nationalist resistance in the face of British colonialism. In this talk, Pika probes such perceptions to revisit to the fundamental question, what is a kantha, discussed in her book at greater length.

REGISTER HERE!

Art Speaks: Rachel Breen, Amy Meissner, Celia Pym, and Winnie van der Rijn, Mining Mending and Social Practice,

12 pm, Thursday June 22, 2023, on Zoom

REGISTRATION OPENING SOON!

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Support for Organizations grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.