Online Programs

In the midst of the pandemic, the Guild is going online to virtual programs!
We are using Zoom to have meetings and lectures. Let us know who your favorite artists are. We may be able to bring them to town through Zoom!
Once you register on the form at the end of this page you will receive an email with an invitation to join the meeting. You can register for several programs at once.

Registration closes an hour before the event!
Hope to see you there!

Show and Share and Critique meetings
Please register on the Registration Form. Registration closes an hour before the event!
For FGP members, you can bring a guest.

Show & Shares as well as Critiques will become hybrid. They will be both in Person at Contemporary Craft in Lawrenceville, 5645 Butler Street 15201 and also on Zoom. We will reevaluate monthly to see if we continue with this modality. Please register so we can update you on any changes to the format. You do not have to submit work, you can attend to meet other guild members and see what people are working on.
You have a choice to be there:
       –IN PERSON if you are vaccinated, “boosted” and masked, or 10 days after you have recovered from Covid    
       –On Zoom.

Those who are “showing” on Zoom must send images ahead of time to Jamie Boyle jamieannboyle@gmail.com. You may take pictures of your work on your cell phone and forward to Jamie, don’t forget to identify yourself in the email.
What is the difference between a Show & Share and a Critique? You can attend both! You can attend even if you have no work to share.

Show & Share: for members who don’t want suggestions, they just want to show off, share what they are working on, and meet other Guild members.
Critique: for members who want constructive suggestions about their work to solve technical, aesthetic or presentation problems.

This is a fun way to stay connected and get inspired!!
Please join us!


ThrED talks

Please register on the Registration Form. Registration closes an hour before the event!
Program for members only.
ThrED talks are not recorded.

ThrED TALKs focus on technique, materials, technology, innovation, design, and education in fiber. In this March ThrED TALK our speakers will each give a 15 -minute presentation and then there will be plenty of time for comments and questions. Please join us as we share information and pick up pointers!

Upcoming program information coming soon.

Send ThrED talks suggestions to Michelle at mlbatoast7@gmail.com.


Professional Artist /Maker Series

Please register on the Registration Form. Registration closes an hour before the event!
For FGP members only.
This Series is not recorded.


Speaker series

Erika DIamond
Wednesday, May 31, 2023 / 7PM EST
Registration is free.
Registration opens about a month before the lecture. Please register on the Registration Form

May 31, 7 pm on Zoom Erika Diamond will give a 30 minute presentation, after which we will introduce and confirm the new board members. This will give us the opportunity to express our appreciation to our retiring board members.
Erika Diamond Fiberart International 2019 Artist will talk about her new exhibition currently at Contemporary Craft called SELF; a two person show featuring Erika and Matt Lambert. The exhibition continues until August 19.
Diamond is a textile-focused artist curator and educator based in Asheville, NC. She received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has exhibited nationally and abroad, and her costumes have been commissioned by the Charlotte Ballet. Erika has had many artist residencies and has taught at Virginia Commonwealth University, Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, Appalachian Center for Craft and Penland School of Crafts. She is Assistant Director of Galleries at Chautauqua Institution in western New York.
Erika’s skill and use of textiles–as fashion, as ornament, as protection, and as cultural identifier—is most impressive.

https://www.erikadiamond.com/



Past lectures

Ben Cuevas
December 5, 2022 – 2 PM ET

Born in Southern California in 1987, Ben Cuevas is an artist whose work is rooted in concepts of otherness and intersectionality, inspired by his queer, non-binary, HIV-positive, and Latinx lived experience. As these multiple components inform his practice, identity directly influences his artwork, which is naturally interdisciplinary. Cuevas received his B.A. in mixed media, installation, and photography at Hampshire College, in 2010.

A central part of Cuevas’s artwork is based in textiles, underscoring queer/feminist ideologies within the long and gendered history of women’s work with fiber-based materials. These artworks have been shown across the US with exhibitions held at The Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles, Museum of the City of New York, The Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York City, and others.

Cuevas’s work also speaks to queer histories and the idea of the archive through his photo-based works centering images of sexual minorities from past into the present. This can be seen in his piece Ghosts of the Trucks of the Westside Highway, and his ongoing photo series titled Reinserted.

Several books and publications feature Cuevas’s work, such as DUETS: Ben Cuevas & Annie Sprinkle in Conversation, published by Visual AIDS; Queer Threads: Crafting, Identity, and Community, edited by John Chaich and Todd Oldham. Acclaimed as a public speaker, Cuevas has given talks at institutions including, Brown University, Ohio State University, The Museum of Sex (NYC), and the Fire Island Artist Residency.
bencuevas.com


Adrienne Sloane, FI2022 and FI2019 artist,
November 1, 2022 – 1PM ET
Registration is free for members, $5 for guests.
Please register on the Registration Form

A contemporary fiber artist with a political focus, Adrienne Sloane has deeply explored all forms of sculptural knit structures out of her Massachusetts studio. Increasingly embracing a broad range of approaches and techniques while remaining mindful of the rich historical context of her medium, Sloane addresses timely yet universal issues hoping to promote thoughtful dialogue about critical questions as we navigate our difficult times.

Sloane’s work has won many awards and has been widely published.  She has work in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Fuller Craft Museum, the Goldstein Museum of Design, and The Kamm Collection as well as private collections. She has worked with indigenous knitters in Bolivia and Peru and also taught and exhibited internationally.


Jim Arendt
October 11, 2022

Jim Arendt is an Associate Professor of Visual Arts and Gallery Director at Coastal Carolina University. He received his BFA from Kendall College of Art & Design and his MFA from the University of South Carolina. He has participated in residency programs including The Fields Project in Illinois, Arrowmont’s Tactility Forum, and From Waste to Art VI in Baku, Azerbaijan. He’s been invited to teach at Penland School of Craft and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts.

Recently, Arendt received First Prize during Fiberarts International 2019, was short-listed for The 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art and a 2018 finalist for the Elizabeth R. Raphael Founder’s Prize, Society for Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh, PA. He has received the South Carolina Arts Commission Visual Artist Fellowship 2014 and his work received the $50,000 top prize at ArtFields 2013. His work was chosen for the 2013 Museum Rijswijk Textile Biennial, Netherlands, and he has work include in the Arkansas Art Center’s permanent collection of contemporary craft.

He has juried numerous local, regional, and national exhibitions in support of the arts across the country.

www.JimArendt.com


Ann Coddington
September 8, 2022

Ann Coddington utilizes a variety of traditional and innovative fiber techniques including twining, looping, lashing and netting in her sculptural forms. Her recent work is deeply rooted in organic vessels that reference the body, natural and found objects, that enter into a complex dialogue about our place in the world and our impact on the environment. Her work has been shown across the United States and Internationally with recent solo shows at the Contemporary Art Center in Peoria, Governors State University in Illinois, and upcoming at the Praxis Fiber Workshop in Cleveland. Coddington’s work was also selected for inclusion in the 2022 International Fiber Biennial in Pittsburgh this past summer.

Ann is a Professor of Art and Graduate Coordinator at Eastern Illinois University. She received her MFA from the University of Illinois Sculpture Department in 1993, and her BFA from the Colorado State University Fibers Department in1986. She is very active in teaching sculptural twining workshops around the world. Ann recently taught at the Penland School of Crafts, Indigo Blue Hawaii studios, the Chicago North Suburban Needle Arts Guild and upcoming for Fibre Arts Australia. Coddington serves as the co-chair of Exhibitions and as a member of the board for the National Basketry Organization.

Instagram: @abcoddington


Fiberart International 2022

July 28, 2022
Meet and Greet at the Brew House Gallery, followed by refreshments followed by 6:00 pm Presentation by Robin Bernstein “Beauty and Terror” with Introduction by Marcel Walker of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh
FI2022 Artist Robin Bernstein, trained as a painter, has worked with string and wax as her primary medium for the past 15 years. Her work focuses on both historical and urgent contemporary content and is created by obsessively cutting tiny pieces of colored string and then pressing them into wax. Bernstein believes that art has the power to shift human behavior and therefore chooses subject matter, materials, and processes that support this idea. Bernstein’s subject matter combined with her artistic technique is her way of shouting from the rooftops that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. You can find Robin’s website here.


Lecture with Wen Redmond

May 3, 2022 – 1PM EST

Wen Redmond

New England artist, Wen Redmond’s fascination with photography finds expression through printing manipulated original photographs directly onto various mixed media substrates, and specially treated natural fibers to create unique stitched photographic textural constructions. She calls this work, Digital Fiber.
Redmond continues to investigate the digital world but also imaginative presentations that add to the pioneering exploration of her media which gives her work edge. Each work is unique and created individually.
Redmond’s techniques can be further investigated in her latest publication, Digital Fiber Art and Other Mixed Media Masterpieces. She delights in creating dialogue, changing perspectives and perceptions of fiber.

Wen Redmond

Lecture with Judith Content

April 13, 2022 – 1 PM EST

Judith Content

Judith Content has been a full time studio artist for more than 40 years.  She graduated from San Francisco State University in 1979 with a BA in Fine Art with an Emphasis in Textiles. Her arashi-shibori dyed, discharged, pieced and quilted silk wall pieces have been exhibited nationally and internationally and included in major public, private and museum collections worldwide. Recent solo exhibitions include Shadow Dance (2020) at the Visions Museum of Textile Art in San Diego, CA, Evanescence at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, San Jose, CA and Tansey Contemporary Gallery, Denver CO, 2019.

Content participated in the invitational 15th International Triennial of Tapestry at the Central Museum of Textiles in Ludz, Poland, 2016. The Texas Quilt Museum organized a retrospective exhibition of her work Intuitive Symmetry: Works on Silk in 2015. Judith has work touring in the SAQA exhibitions 3D EXPRESSIONS and Connections, and the Invitational SAQA exhibition. Layered and Stitched: 50 Years of Innovative Art.

Content was one of four featured artists in the Craft in America documentary series: QUILTS and participated in the accompanying exhibition at the Craft in America Center, Los Angeles, CA. (2020)

Museum collections include the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textile, The Museum of Art and Design in New York and the International Shibori Collection, Nagoya, Japan. Personal collections include, John Walsh, Maureen Hendricks, Del Thomas and Martha Sielman.

 Judith has served as juror for Quilt National and Quilt Visions and is President Emerita of the Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) where she created and chaired the SAQA Exhibition Program. Key publications include Craft in America, Celebrating Two Centuries of Artists and Objects, Textiles: The Art of Mankind, and SILKby Mary Schoeser, Masters: Art Quilts I, by Martha Sielman, The Art Quilt by Robert Shaw and Memory on Cloth: Shibori Now, by Yoshiko I. Wada.

In addition to working with textiles, Content enthusiastically explores other creative tributaries including jewelry design, sculptural crochet, and ephemeral landart installations.

Judith Content

Lecture with Cynthia Lockhart

March 16, 2022 – 1 PM EST

Cynthia Lockhart

Cynthia Lockhart’s fiber art is infused with a kaleidoscope of diverse influences such as:  nature, fashion, music, dance, travel, African and other cultural arts. Lockhart’s textiles are distinguished by their pulsating colors, which simulate the vivaciousness of her African ancestry, and by their irregular, organic shapes and circles. The artist’s textile creations, which push the boundaries of the traditional quilt form, are composed of colorful fabrics arranged in dynamic patterns. Her fashion and accessories design background provide the perfect platform for creating exquisite three-dimensional artwork.  Lockhart’s fiber art tells a story – one that encourages people to understand the diversity of people, cultures, and beauty in the world around them. As an award-winning international artist, she is an active contributor in the design arts community. As Emerita Associate Professor at the University of Cincinnati, Professor Lockhart has lectured at conferences and museums throughout the United States, Japan, Italy and France. She is a member of the Women of Color Quilters Network. In 2021, Lockhart received the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award.
Cynthia was a Fiberart International 2013 participant artist.

Cynthia Lockhart

Lecture with Greg Climer

February 10, 2022 – 1 PM EST

Greg Climer

Greg Climer’s work focuses on how traditional crafts can be transformed by new technologies in a way that maintains the warmth and value of the handmade. His work focuses on his identity as a queer man and how craft can shape identity in the LGBT community. 

In addition to his career as an artist, Greg Climer is the chair of the fashion program at California College of the Arts. He received his MFA in design+technology from Parsons School of Design. His textile work has been shown in the Museum of Art and Design (NYC), The Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art (NYC), The DeYoung Museum (San Francisco, CA), The Mint Museum of Art (Charlotte, NC), Muskegon Museum of Art (Muskegon, MI), and many galleries. He has also worked on the design teams for Victoria’s Secret Runway Show, Karl Lagerfeld, Imitation of Christ, John Bartlett, and on many Broadway shows and movies.
Greg was a selected artist in Fiberart International 2019.

Greg Climer

Lecture with Nnenna Okore

January 18, 2022 – 11 AM EST

Nnenna Okore

Nnenna Okore (born in Australia, 1975) is an artist who works both in Nigeria and the United States. Her largely abstract sculptures and installations have been shown in galleries and museums in and outside of the United States. She has won several international awards, including a Fulbright Scholar Award in 2012. Okore is currently a Professor of Art at North Park University in Chicago. The daughter of a professor and a librarian, she often examines her American identity versus her Nigerian identity and the contrasts between her homeland with that of the States. https://nnennaokore.com
Nnenna is one of Fiberart International 2022 jurors.


Lecture with Elizabeth Whyte Shulze

December 8, 2021 – 1 PM EST

Elizabeth’s Artist statement:
“My interest in textiles, baskets, petroglyph and archaeological sites throughout the world has led me to travel to destinations with ancient ruins, bustling markets, painted caves and world heritage sites. My 2020 basket sculptures reflect impressions of a recent tour to Morocco. The colorful carpets woven by tribal women inspired me to use a textured stitch to convey each rug design. In the background can be seen the familiar Moorish Arch and tiled walls so prevalent in Moroccan architecture.

Each work has a central female figure who is calling to women of the world to support each other in their daily life. Occasionally she wears an elaborate hat made of tiny metal or paper washers similar to sequins used by Moroccan weavers to reflect the light when the rug is spread on the ground. Berber women in the countryside often wore facial tattoos. I use tattoo designs to add a new layer of marks with origins in Moroccan history. The gathered women include a tattooed woman, a pink hat girl, a girl wearing fashionable rabbit ears, a Mighty Mouse girl, a Burka clad woman and RBG to emphasize the need for all women to join together for a better future.

My technique is coiled basketry using pine needles and raffia. I adhere to the basket a thin layer of handmade Japanese paper forming a skin. Using acrylic paint I transform the surface of the basket with imagery and content drawn from my travel experiences.  By adding layers of marks and unusual papers gathered during my travels I create a complex landscape of imagery and the importance of women in daily life.”


Lecture with Chiachio & Giannone

November 17, 2021 – 1 PM EST

Chiachio & Giannone

Working and living together as partners in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Chiachio & Giannone create hand embroidered textile mosaics that reference LGBTQ artists and their legacy in Latin America. Chiachio & Giannone recently completed a residency at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, CA and Lux Art Institute in Encinitas, CA.
They have shown at De Buck Gallery, New York, NY; Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Miami, FL; Ruth Benzacar Galería de Arte, Argentina, School Gallery, Paris, France, the Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA; and the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK, Museum of Art and Design MAD, NY, USA.
http://www.chiachiogiannone.com
Chiachio & Giannone were Fiberart International 2022 jurors.


Lecture with Valerie Goodwin

October 14th, 2021, at 11 AM EST

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Valerie Goodwin

Valerie S. Goodwin is a mixed media fiber artist and architect whose works of fine art are included in museum and private collections. Most of her work is inspired by a love of aerial views of landscapes and cities. Many of her quilts are based on maps.

Goodwin’s art has moved through various stages from traditional quilting to an interest in abstract expressionism and, currently it is inspired by real and imaginary landscapes and cities. In some cases, her work shows an architectural sense of space with an archaeological perspective.  In others, the network of the city and its built form is more prominent.  These compositions work on several levels, from close up and far away as if one was looking at it from above.

She received degrees in architecture from Washington University and Yale University. Her award-winning work has been widely published and exhibited. She also lectures and gives workshops nationally and internationally. For over 26 years, she taught architectural design at Florida A & M University.

valeriegoodwin@comcast.net 850-510-4290

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Valerie Goodwin

Lecture with Sue Reno

September 14, 2021 – 3 PM EST

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Sue Reno

Sue Reno is an award winning fiber artist from Pennsylvania. Her rich and intricate art quilts reflect her local environment and incorporate imagery drawn from her studies of botany, wildlife, and historic architecture.

She employs surface design techniques including cyanotype, mono printing, digital image transfer, and needle felting as the basis for works that also incorporate hand painted fabrics, hand and machine stitching, and beadwork.

Sue’s work was selected for the U.S. State Department Art in Embassies program in Vientiane, Laos. Her “Silk Mill #3” was added to the permanent fine art collection of the Pennsylvania State Museum. Her work has been featured in publications including American Quilter, Quilting Arts Magazine, Machine Quilting Unlimited, The Quilt Life Magazine, Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine, Seasonal Palette, The Studio Quilt and 1000 Artisan Textiles, and in an episode of “Simply Quilts” on HGTV. Sue is featured in several episodes of Quilting Arts TV, airing on PBS stations nationwide. 

Sue was one of a select group of artists chosen to participate in the James Webb Space Telescope Artist Event at NASA Goddard Space Center. She has exhibited in solo shows as well as participating in numerous art and fine craft exhibits at venues including The Pennsylvania State Museum, the Robeson gallery at Penn State, the Wayne Art Center, the Wolf Gallery at York College, and the Bellefonte Museum, all in PA; the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY, the Texas Quilt Museum in La Grange, TX, the Greater Denton Art Council, TX, the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in Auburn, NY, The Vision Gallery in Chandler, AZ, the Monmouth Museum in Lincroft, NJ, and the Museum of Fine Art in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. She regularly contributes to quilt exhibits across the US. Her career includes lecturing on the creative process and serving as a juror for fine craft and quilt exhibitions.

Sue’s website https://suereno.com/


Lecture with Dorothy Caldwell

August 16, 2021 – 1 PM EST

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Dorothy Caldwell is a graduate of Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and presently maintains an active international exhibition and teaching schedule from her studio in Hastings, Ontario. She has carried out research projects in Japan and India, and has worked “on site” in the Australian outback and the Canadian Arctic.  Her work is included in private and permanent collections including the American Museum of Art and Design, NYC, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the International Quilt Museum and Study Center University of Nebraska, The Canadian Department of External Affairs , and Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull Quebec among others.


Lecture with Fuyuko Matsubara

June 15, 2021 – 1 PM EST

Fuyuko was born and grew up in Sapporo, northern Japan. She received both BA and MA in Industrial and Craft Design from Musashino Art University in Tokyo. After working as an interior designer and a professional artist, she came to the United States in order to study further at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan where she received a MFA in Fiber Art. Fuyuko’s main medium is pictorial weaving which involves complex methods of dyeing and re-weaving. It is internationally recognized along with her other worldly spiritual imagery and received many awards. She also works on silk painting and is working on the theme of “Light of Seeds,” expressing energy of growth. In her most recent series, entitled “Lightscape” and “Blossoms of Light”, she depicts the positive quality of light. She has been exhibiting her work nationally and internationally in both solo and group exhibitions. She has received Individual Artist Grants from New York Foundation for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Hand Weavers Guild of America Award, and the First Prize in “Fiberart International”. She served at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a Senior Restorer and taught fiber and textile art courses in numerous institutions. She recently retired from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Now she is enjoying her free time producing art work, raising plants and animals, watching nature, and visiting botanical gardens, galleries, and museums.
Fuyuko’s website http://www.fmartworks.com


Lecture with Carolyn L. Mazloomi

May 13, 2021 – 3 PM EST
There is no recording available for this lecture

Carolyn L. Mazloomi is an artist, author, historian, and curator acknowledged as being among the most influential African American quilt historians in the United States.  Widely exhibited in the United States and internationally, her quilts have been included in five exhibitions at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery.  Her artwork can be found in numerous important museums and corporate collections, such as the Wadsworth Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, American Museum of Design, Bell Telephone, the Cleveland Clinic, and Exxon.  She has appeared on television shows such as CBS Morning Show, Reading Rainbow, The Today Show, CNN, and has been the subject of several film documentaries. Dr. Mazloomi is one of six artist commissioned to create artwork for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Museum.
In 1985 she founded the Women of Color Quilters Network, an international organization with a membership of 1700, which has been a major force in fostering the fiberart works of African American people.  Through Dr. Mazloomi’s effort WCQN members have had their quilts presented in venues such as prominent museums and galleries, and in internationally traveled exhibitions. She is a frequent consultant for art exhibitions, authors, and historians.
Beijing, China was the setting for an international quilt exhibition curated by Dr. Mazloomi as part of the United Nations Conference for Women held in 1995.  This exhibition resulted in the publication of the book Star Quilts (Streelekha Press, Bangalore, India) which she co-edited.  She is also author of the book Spirits of the Cloth (Random House)given the “Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year” award by the American Library Association.  Her books and exhibition tours include, Threads of Faith, Textural Rhythms: Quilting the Jazz Tradition (2007) and Quilting African American Women’s History Our Challenges, Creativity and Champions (2008), The Journey of Hope in America: Quilts Celebrating President Barack Obama (2009) and Quilting a Culture: African American Quilters of Ohio (2011), And Still We Rise: Race, Cultural and Visual Conversations (2014), Conscience of the Human Spirit: The Life of Nelson Mandela (2014) and Visioning Human Rights in the New Millennium: Quilting the World’s Conscience (2018), and Racism: In the Face of Hate We Resist (2020).
In 2003 Dr. Mazloomi was awarded the first Ohio Heritage Fellowship Award. Ohio Heritage Fellows are among the state’s living cultural treasures.  Fellows embody the highest level of artistic achievement in their work, and the highest level of service in the teaching and other work they do in their communities to ensure that their artistic traditions stay strong. 
In 2014 Dr. Mazloomi has given the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Award, the highest award in the nation for traditional art.  She was also inducted into the Quilters Hall of Fame Museum the same year.
Mazloomi has been involved in the economic development of women through the arts for over thirty years, and has been recognized by the International Labour Department in Geneva and the United Nations for her efforts.


Lecture with Bruce Hoffman

April 22, 2021 – 3 PM EST
Please register on the Registration Form.
Free program for members – $5.- for non-members.

Bruce Hoffman is Director of Gravers Lane Gallery in Philadelphia. He has been working in the field of studio crafts for more than three decades. During these years he has taught at Moore College of Art and Design, lectured and been a guest critic for many colleges, and has had the honor to jury shows for many fine museums, guilds, and art centers across the country.
Fiber and textile-centric art has been a main focus. Along with five friends, Bruce created and curated Fiber Philadelphia 2012. This four-month event showcased 61exhibits of fiber throughout the city. Bruce has a historical understanding of studio crafts as well as an appreciation of artists’ work and process. This guides his curatorial choices while enjoying the visceral delight of material, color, form, and texture.


Lecture with fiber artist Hannah Streefkerk

March 16, 2021 – 11 AM EST

Hannah Streefkerk (originally from The Netherlands but living in Sweden for the past 8 years) works consists of installations in situ, outside ore inside and embroidery works. In a lot of her works textiles and textile techniques, like crocheting and embroidery, play a significant role. The time consuming nature of this techniques, fits well to the main themes in her work; environmental issues and the nature of time. How do we look, ore not look at nature. As a contemporary Florence Nightingale, based in nature, Streefkerk goes into the forest to mend wounded trees and leaves, using yarn. She stitches together the torn bark of various trees and repairs the holes in fallen leaves on the forest’s floor.
Today the trend in our everyday lives is to ‘use and discard’, instead of taking time to repair or restore our belongings. We would rather buy a new pair of socks than try to stitch up the holes, and we would rather buy a new chair than try to fix the broken leg back on.
Hannah Streefkerk challenges this attitude, as she takes it upon herself to manually repair her natural surroundings, ore emphasizes details in nature with needle and thread. She creates a visual metaphor for our responsibility for taking better care of our environment.
Hannah was part of Fiberart International in 2010.
https://hannahstreefkerk.viewbook.com/


Lecture with fiber artist Merill Comeau

February 16, 2021 – 1 PM EST

Merill Comeau

Merill Comeau is a mixed media artist, who creates installations, murals and garments examining narratives of repair and regeneration.
In addition to drawing and painting, Comeau deconstructs, reconstructs, and alters clothing and linens to disrupt, reorder, and build stories exploring common human concerns. Her use of repurposed materials evidences her concerns of environmental sustainability and the inequitable use of resources.
Merill is inspired by traditions of craft and the history of ‘women’s work.’  Her choices of materials and processes are informed by trauma and feminism; and employ worn fabrics of the domestic sphere and the mark making of stitch to convey narratives of mending and endurance.
She also reclaims cast offs through painting, printing, stenciling, printing and rusting, to create layers of enriched surface, to flesh out ideas and metaphors. 
Merill Comeau’s work has been featured in exhibitions around the world, including most recently, Fiberart International ’19.  She has also executed over thirty public projects resulting in individual and collaborative artworks, and is a popular speaker and workshop instructor. 

Merill will teach a week-long challenge: “Art & Autobiography”, an online workshop on April 10–17, 2021. Registration is through Contemporary Craft.


Lecture with fiber artist Sandra Sider

January 19, 2021 – 3 PM EST

Sandra Sider, a New York quilt artist since the early 1980s, has led critique workshops since 2005. She holds an M.A. in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Sandra has served as president of SAQA, and today she is Editor of Art Quilt Quarterly and Curator of the Texas Quilt Museum. She has written or edited more than a dozen books concerning contemporary quilt art, including Art Quilts Unfolding: Fifty Years of Innovation and Exploring Your Artistic Voice in Contemporary Quilt Art.  As of 2020, she is designing fabric lines for Benartex, beginning with “Votes for Women.” www.sandrasider.com

For the January lecture, Dr. Sandra Sider is inviting all Guild members to submit an image of their work to explain the curatorial process often used in forming a fiber art exhibition.  How is your work viewed in the selection process, and what are the important key factors?    This is NOT a critique, but rather an educational, fun exercise, to watch a highly experienced curator, make decisions, step by step.  Submit a piece today!  No size limit for the work, no made by date — anything you wish to submit!  One or two images per member, no detail images.  Join in the fun, and see the results in January!
“Fiber Art in a Curatorial Framework” presented by Sandra Sider, will begin with a 20-minute slide lecture in which Dr. Sider discusses how works selected can be viewed for exhibition purposes, ending with an “exhibition” displaying the pieces. She will then summarize the main points concerning the creative process in her new book, Exploring Your Artistic Voice in Contemporary Quilt Art, encouraging questions about any of the topics discussed.


Lecture with fiber artist Kirstie Macleod- Red Dress Project

December December 14, 2020 – 11 AM EST

Kirstie Macleod

Exploring issues of identity, the subconscious and the passage of time my work seeks to articulate specific events and interactions through a kaleidoscopic, emotion led vision. The ‘circle’, and textile processes, specifically embroidery feature at the heart of my practice, although often in unusual ways.
I am fascinated with its diversity and potential as a means of communication (or subversion), its history and practice throughout the world both as an art form and in daily life, and the repetitive, meditative and healing effects experienced through its creation.
With a background in Textiles, Visual Language and theatrical based disciplines, the works form a diverse portfolio comprising embroidery, painting, photography, drawing and installation.


Lecture with fiber artist Maggie Scott

November 16, 2020 11AM EST

Maggie Scott

Maggie Scott creates her artwork from the particularity of who she is: a black woman, a feminist, a daughter, a mother, an activist and a British Textile Artist.
Well-known for her sumptuously crafted felt textiles to wear; her large-scale works draw on the aesthetic and symbolic potential of the laborious process of felting. The hand-felted re-interpretations of photographic images often explore the politics of the representation and tensions and contradictions of a Black British or Black European identity.
Born in London, Maggie graduated from St. Martin’s School of Art in 1976 with BA honors in Fashion Textiles and she set up her first studio in London in 1980.
Her professional life as a Textile Artist had existed in parallel with her involvement in gender and race politics. Her experiment with a series of large, autobiographical textile pieces led to a bursary award and a one woman show at Leicester Museum in 2012, “Negotiations – black in a white majority culture”.
After the success of “Negotiations” Maggie has been invited to exhibit in several major USA cities, as well as Germany, Belgium, Portugal, China and Canada.
www.maggiescottonline.com


Lecture with fiber artist Eszter Bornemisza

October 20, 2020 – 1:00 PM EST

Eszter Bornemisza

Eszter Bornemisza is a fiber artist living in Budapest, Hungary. She trained as a mathematician, earned a PhD in mathematical statistics and worked in the field as a researcher for nearly twenty years.
Having been experienced in sewing garments she started making art quilts in the mid ’90ties. In the last ten years she has been creating large scale transparent fiber works, 3D objects and installations mainly from the ubiquitous material of waste newspaper and cloth. Her work is based on experimentation and research. The basic process of creation is machine stitching with additional elements of printing, dyeing and painting.
Her works have been widely exhibited in juried and solo shows in Europe, America, Australia, China and Japan. She has been awarded several prizes in national and international juried shows. She has been a full-time studio artist since 1999.
Eszter was a participating artist in Fiberart International 2013 and 2016.
www.bornemisza.com


Lecture with Dawn Williams Boyd

September 29, 2020 – 2:00 PM EST

Dawn Williams Boyd

Dawn Williams Boyd’s artwork reflects her interest in American history as it affects and is affected by its African American citizens and women’s identity concerns. Her most recent work considers how U.S. politics influences the human condition worldwide. After more than 30 years successfully painting in oils and acrylic paints, in 2002 this prolific artist began to ‘paint’ with fabric instead of on fabric.
Her large scale ‘cloth paintings’ are representative and packed with vibrant, often life sized figures. Strategically placed beads, sequins, cowry shells, laces, silk ribbons and, occasionally, acrylic paints are occasionally added to embellish the surface. Through cutting, patching, surface enhancement and quilting, bits and pieces of fabric are transformed into modern visual storytelling.
https://www.dawnwilliamsboyd.com


Lecture with Sue Hotchkis

August 20, 2020 – 11AM EST

Sue Hotchkis

Susan Hotchkis studied at Manchester Metropolitan University where she earned a BA (Hons) in Embroidery and a Master Degree in Textiles. She lectured in Manchester teaching adults and pre-degree students in Art and Textiles. Susan left teaching in 2007 and now works at home in her studio on the Black Isle in the Highlands of Scotland. She uses print techniques and machine stitch to create two- and three-dimensional abstract wall pieces, saturated with colour and stitch to highlight the beauty found in the processes of ageing and decay.
She has exhibited nationally and international and has recently had a solo show in Australia and has undertaken private commissions as well as been included in several publications.  In 2017 she became a member of the International Textile group ‘Quilt Art’, the group currently has two touring shows ‘Material Evidence’ and ‘Traces’. She is also a member of SAQA, SDA and has recently joined ‘Edge Textiles’ Scotland. Her website is www.suehotchkis.com.  You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.


Lecture with Emily Jan

EMILY JAN (b. 1977, Los Angeles, USA) is a Montreal-based artist and writer. Her biophilic
sculptures and installations combine everyday found objects with meticulously worked raw
materials to evoke the faraway and the fantastical. As a wanderer, naturalist, and collector of objects and stories, she is guided in her work by the spirit of kinship and exploration.
Recent exhibitions include Wild at the Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto (2019), Castaways at the Bateman Foundation Gallery of Nature, Victoria (2020), and Grow Op: After the Flood at the Gladstone Hotel, Toronto (2018). Solo exhibitions include The World is Bound by Secret Knots, Before the Fall, and After the Hunt at various artist run centres across Canada (2014–2020).
After the Hunt was also featured in Polaris Award-winning musician Jeremy Dutcher’s music video, Mehcinut (2019). Upcoming projects include Re-Crafted, the 2020 Canadian Contemporary Craft Exhibition, a part of the inaugural Bonavista Craft Biennale. Jan was awarded the Excellence in Fibers Award 2017, and she won the People’s Choice Award at the Fiberarts International Triennale 2016. She has written and illustrated three books; still life (2014), A Denali Book of Hours (2017), and The Glory of the Seas: A Shell Collector’s Journey in collaboration with Stephen H. Kawai (2020).


Lecture with Nancy Koenigsberg

For the past twenty years Koenigsberg’s work has been concerned with interlocking lines and the spaces they form. She creates a sense of weightlessness and luminescence by the manipulation of narrow gauge industrial wire, exploring the contradiction between metal elements known for their strength and durability and the delicacy of the textiles which are created. These lace-like layers of nets allow for transparency and the passage of light and the formation of shadows. In other works the nets are thickly layered and become almost opaque. Lines cross and re-cross to create a complex fabric and tangle of shadows. The objects appear fragile, but she seeks to maintain their strength through the use of these materials.
Nancy Koenigsberg is a full time artist and maintains a studio in NYC. Her work uses a variety of textile techniques – weaving, knotting and crochet. Current materials are primarily steel and copper wires of various weights and colors. Nancy has exhibited widely in the US, Europe and Asia, both in juried and invitational exhibitions. Her work is in many private and public collections, including Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Cleveland Museum, Museum of Arts and Design, NYC and the Racine Art Museum. She is a founding member of the Textile Study Group of New York, Inc. and currently serves as its President Emerita.