Gallery Exhibitions

24 March, 2015

Hennepin History Museum #MuseumWeek

beckarahn2015-03-24T10:12:39-05:00Gallery Exhibitions, Sewing & Design, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|1 Comment

It ‘s #MuseumWeek on Twitter this week and that seemed like a great excuse to talk about my favorite museum in the Twin Cities: Hennepin History Museum. Museum Week is a fun celebration of museums behind the scenes. Yesterday the theme was “behind the scenes secrets” and today the theme is “souvenirs”. And I have some great souvenirs from HHM!

I visited the museum a few weeks ago and brought along my camera. HHM is housed in a turn-of-the-century mansion that is full of beautiful details. When I was there taking photos, an exhibition of hand fans had just opened to coincide with a “Fireside Chat“, an afternoon lecture by a local fan collector. HHM holds these chats every other week and they feature local authors and history experts talking about everything from beekeeping to baseball.

I was really enamoured with this painted feather fan. It is made from white goose feathers which are painted with a floral spray and tipped with peacock plumes. Since I have been designing skirts non-stop the last few months, I looked at this and saw a skirt (naturally). My wrap skirt design is a 3/4 circle, which is a tough shape to work from, but a fan is already a 1/3 circle shape. It was a natural fit!

I love those peacock feathers around the hem! The museum staff was so excited that I was making things inspired by the collection that they invited me to have this skirt on display along with the fans. It was neat for me to see the two side-by-side and you can see them too if you stop by.

I also took some photos of the woodwork details in the Fireside Room. This helix patterned trim is featured throughout the room.

And that also inspired a design. I haven’t stitched up the sample of this one yet, but you can see the sketch. I used this bit of woodwork trim to make radiating stripes from the waist to hem. I also designed a basic stripe based on this woodwork pattern, which I will hopefully be printing to make silk scarves for the HHM shop a little later in the spring.

One visit and two pretty awesome designs! I feel like I found buried treasure. I can’t wait to go back and see what else I find.

I had never actually heard of Hennepin History Museum before a year or so ago, even though it has been around since the 50s. My friend Cedar is their new Executive Director and I think she has some pretty awesome ideas and the enthusiasm to bring their knowledge and collections more into the community. In fact, I joined the Board of Directors in January, so I can help her out with that project. If you are in the Twin Cities area, I hope you will stop by and visit or come for a Fireside Chat.

8 January, 2015

Jerome Foundation Grant: What a way to start off 2015!

beckarahn2015-01-08T15:28:36-06:00Gallery Exhibitions|1 Comment

I have some exciting news to start the new year!

Fiber Artists on the Rise
Textile Center Designates 2015 – 2016
Jerome Fiber Artist Project Grant Recipients
January 7, 2015
MINNEAPOLIS, MN — Textile Center is pleased to announce the 2015 Jerome Fiber Artists Project Grant Recipients: Sarah Kusa, Becka Rahn, Jennifer Schultz, and Kate Vinson. Now in its seventh year, this program is designed to expand opportunities for emerging fiber artists in Minnesota, supporting them each with a $5,000 project grant, as well as additional professional development programming (in collaboration with Springboard for the Arts). The fellowships include exhibition planning and implementation culminating with a final show of the artists’ new work from September through October, 2015, at Textile Center’s Joan Mondale Gallery.

Sarah Kusa
Kusa attended the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and has continued with her artistic education with classes at Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Textile Center, and the University of Minnesota. Manipulating and transforming materials such as paper, thread or fabric is at the heart of Sara’s studio practice. The materials she uses play with the duality of delicate-and-strong that can be mimicked in the human condition, and her final works are sculptural forms that deal with human vulnerability, resilience, and interconnectedness.

Kusa’s goals with her project are to grow her body of sculptural three-dimensional work, and to learn first-hand about creating larger-scale installations for a gallery space. Drawing on recent works and structuring the project based on distinct types of spacial problem solving, Kusa will create a wall-based, floor-based and ceiling-suspended installation.

Becka Rahn
Rahn is a self-taught “engineer” of digital surface design and wearable art. She creates designs from digitally manipulated photographs which are then printed on a variety of fabrics. She uses her custom fabrics to make wearable art garments using original and vintage patterns. Rahn worked as the Education Manager at Textile Center for 11 years; she recently retired to pursue her artistic career.

Focusing on artistic development for the project grant, Rahn identified important goals that could be achieved by collaborating with other artists on digital designs, called “duets,” and making these designs into wearable art. The final digital designs and garments will reflect the conversations had throughout the creative process about texture, color, layers, and balance.

Jennifer Schultz
Schultz attended the University of Minnesota and Minneapolis College of Art & Design before moving to Athens, Georgia. While in Athens, she worked as a custom framer and as a curator and manager of a fine art gallery. She became interested in fiber and fabric art and the direction of her exhibition program began to shift. After returning to Minnesota, Schultz joined groups and organizations like Studio Art Quilt Associates, Surface Design Association, and Textile Center. Schultz experiments with encaustic and prints on paper, and finds her calling and commitment to the fiber arts.

Jennifer’s project during the grant period will be to get her work off the wall by creating sculptural books made with quilted and embellished silk, encaustic, and bookbinding materials and techniques. The books will contain printed images, stitching, and incised markings on encaustic. These unique “signatures” will be hand-bound and engage the physical space of the viewer.

Kate Vinson
Vinson discovered the variety and tactile nature of fiber arts while taking art classes while in school for a second career. For Vinson, fibers allow freedom in range of materials and techniques like knotless netting, foiling, and paper arts. She uses these techniques to create sculptures that reflect the natural world and lots of texture.

The project grant will focus on Vinson’s use of materials, processes, and techniques in fiber enhanced through two main professional development opportunities: participating in the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota (WARM) Mentor/Protege program; and attending workshops at the National Basketry Organization’s 8th Biennial Conference.

For 20 years, Textile Center has put $360,200 of Jerome Foundation grant funds to effective use in selecting emerging fiber artists based in Minnesota for individually designed project grants that have informed and advanced their development as artists and their creation of new works. In partnership with the Jerome Foundation, Textile Center supports and celebrate the creative spirit of fiber artists.

1 December, 2014

Infinity Scarves

beckarahn2014-12-01T16:36:04-06:00Gallery Exhibitions, Sewing & Design, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|2 Comments

I am getting all kinds of new things ready for the show I am doing at the American Craft Council Library on December 13. So excited! This is the first large collection of my digital prints that I will have for sale. Last week I finished the cowl scarves. I know that the “giant infinity scarf” is a major trend, but I just don’t think they are that flattering.

(stock photo)

These are made with a more simple and elegant kind of silhouette. More like a necklace. These are all made from polyester crepe, which is soft and lightweight and drapey and the colors are vibrant and gorgeous. I haven’t used this fabric before and I am in love. Each design also has a story:

28 August, 2014

Three Musketeers: New digital prints on exhibit

beckarahn2014-09-24T18:29:13-05:00Gallery Exhibitions, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|5 Comments

As of today, I have three works in three different exhibitions, which are all open at the same time. Pretty dang cool!

On the left is “Rain Storm” which was selected to be a part of Textile Center’s MN State Fair exhibition. These were selected works from the show which was originally held in January 2013. I blogged about it here. It is made from digitally printed and hand-silkscreened fabric with some hand embroidery.

The center piece is called “Concert” part of the 20 for 20 exhibition that opens tonight at Textile Center. This is collaborative fabric that was made by attendees of Textile Center’s birthday party. I guided an activity where everyone was invited to draw an image celebrating fiber art in a square of a 1 inch grid. I combined all of the 50+ images and made a repeat. The dress is inspired by some I saw in the collection at Kensington Palace and the draped sash is there to represent membership in an organization (a fun fact I found while looking up trivia about formal dress.)

The third is “Permafrost“, which I blogged just recently.

Here are some close-ups of the fabric designs, so you can see some of the details:

27 February, 2014

Rain Storm: Silk screen, digital print, hand embroidery

beckarahn2014-09-24T18:30:30-05:00Embroidery, Gallery Exhibitions, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|2 Comments

This is my piece that is in the A Common Thread show at Textile Center this year. It’s a 3 piece “suit” with three different techniques. It started with the fabric for the skirt. I taught a class last summer about silk screening and I needed a sample of how you would create an all over repeat with silk screens. This is two screens – one printed in dark silver and the other in blue. So it took many passes to screen it to make sure that I wasn’t touching any of the wet paint where the edges of the screen might overlap. I made the screens using a thermofax machine and specially treated fabric – you print your design on a laser printer or copier and run it through the machine with the fabric. The coating on the screen is burned away whereever it touches your artwork. It is a very cool process. The fabric is a metallic denim and it is printed in metallic ink, so it is hard to photograph because everything reflects the light. The pattern is a simple pencil skirt because I didn’t want to do much to interrupt the pattern.

The top is digitally printed “silky faille” which is one of Spoonflower’s newer fabrics. I needed an excuse to get some and try it out. The pattern is the same rainclouds from the silk screen, shrunk down and colored using the Spoonflower color chart. The color chart is a piece of fabric printed with “chips” of about 1600 colors that can be printed. Each one has a code, so you can choose the color you want and enter the code in Photoshop as you create your design. Since I had already printed the skirt fabric, I could compare colors on the color chart to the paint colors and get a pretty great match. I forgot when I printed this that the pattern pieces are supposed to be cut on the diagonal grain for this top, but I wanted to keep the design running the same way as on the skirt, so I cut it with the grain. This is such a nice drapey fabric that it worked just fine.

The jacket is a simple bolero trimmed with a little blue organza around the collar and cuffs and then hand embroidered with rows of running stitch, matching the rain drops from the design. I laid out the stitching lines with masking tape that I stitched along the edges of. The buttons are vintage ones I found on Etsy.

12 November, 2013

The Thief

beckarahn2014-09-24T18:30:51-05:00Embroidery, Gallery Exhibitions, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|Comments Off on The Thief

The Thief

2013

Digitally printed fabric with hand embroidery

This piece was my contribution to the art auction in my hometown. They do a fundraiser every year with a silent auction of 8×8 inch pieces. The artists are kept anonymous until after the event, so I have been keeping this one under wraps.

This is a collaboration with my mom. She snapped this photo of one of her neighbor deer. This particular deer had been recently snacking at the neighbors pear tree so I made the repeat pattern behind her with pears and flowers. I embroidered with shiny rayon thread to addd texture to her nose and ears and then gave her extra thick eyelashes. I love the “who me?” expression that mom captured.