Fiber

Fiber is an ever-shifting practice that is grounded in the centuries-old traditions, forms, and materials of textile production and manipulation. As artists, our intimate relationship with the traditional forms of fiber interacts with the expanse of contemporary practice in art, craft, and design, challenging the definitions of each. Whether the work we produce manifests itself as a sculptural form, garment, functional object, tapestry weaving, socially engaged community practice, digital output, or something else we cannot currently name, we embrace it as a mode of exploration.

While attending the Academy you are a member of a community of passionate and rigorous colleagues each questioning your assumptions, place in the world, and the role of your work in that world. Each person must be highly motivated, inquisitive, and open to discussion, challenge, and experimentation. The diversity of experience in the community, each person’s unique insights and skills, provides a broad base of information to help you build an idiosyncratic practice that can sustain your development well beyond your time at the Academy.

Critiques, seminar discussions, research projects, travel, lectures and meetings with visiting artists and critics, are the elements that will support and challenge each student’s exploration.

Weekly critiques establish a dialogue within the department that encourages in-depth examination and questioning. Each member of the department will have two or three critiques each semester. Four or five people have their work critiqued each week and we spend up to an hour discussing each person’s work. Department critiques often include students from other departments that are interested in the dialogue in the Fiber Department and your work. The actual form of the discussion is structured by the person who is having their work critiqued. Written reviews and artist statements are assigned to accompany the work being presented for some critiques.