Kira Keck

This course introduces students to a diverse range of textile materials, processes, histories, politics, traditions, and cultures of fiber and their relationships to contemporary art practice. Historical and contemporary approaches to process and materials are explored as students are introduced to a variety of fiber techniques in construction and surface application. Taught technique can include printing, tapestry weaving, immersion and resist dyeing, knitting, crochet, felting, coiling, hand embroidery, machine sewing, piecework, and embellishment. Textiles have rich and complex histories in all cultures. Examples from across time and place will be explored and discussed through visual presentations, assigned readings, in-class discussions, visiting artist lectures, and field trips. By the end of this course, students will become familiar with the formal, conceptual, expressive, and political potential of fiber as an expressive medium with limitless possibilities. Course work will vary but typically includes the creation of technical samples, critique projects, and reading responses.

This intensive studio course will focus on weaving and its relation to the evolving landscapes of contemporary art, cultural production, and identity. Working with multi-harness floor looms, students will engage rigorous conceptual questions in abstraction, figuration, sculptural form, spatial intervention, performative action, technology, and language to develop a mature body of woven work. Vocabulary will be expanded through the study of complex woven constructions, digital drafting, and dye processes. Feminist, queer, and decolonial approaches to weaving will be introduced and encouraged. Designed for advanced students, this course engenders an interdisciplinary weaving practice by blurring the boundaries between fiber, critical craft, painting, material culture, sculpture, textile history, architecture, and technology studies. Students will consider the history and the future of the field through a varying roster of artists including significant figures such as Sheila Hicks, Lenore Tawney, Magdalena Abakanowicz, and Olga de Amaral alongside contemporary generations such as Sonya Clark, Miguel Arzabe, Diedrick Brackens, Erin M. Riley, Josh Faught, Samantha Bittman, and Cecilia Vicuña. This work will be supported by texts that typically include Anni Albers, Legacy Russel, T'ai Smith, Julia Bryan-Wilson, and César Paternosto. Critical discussion of core texts and individualized research will occur in tandem with weekly studio activity. Students will produce a series of studies and 2 - 4 fully realized woven works that will be developed through in-process discussions and presented in major critique settings. This course facilitates self-directed investigation of concept and technique in hand weaving.