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Weavers Guild Artists,
Communities in the Cloth

 

For more Northern Spark 2019 images, visit our flickr album here.

How many memories were lived while wearing your favorite shirt? How many hands participated in the making of that shirt?

The wear and tear on a favorite shirt is an accumulated history. But in a country where most of our textiles are produced on another continent, it’s easy to take even our favorite shirt for granted.

Textiles, especially clothing, act as insulation, protection, and self-expression. In Communities in the Cloth, participants are invited to reconsider their relationship with textiles through a series of open-ended prompts, conversations, and activities designed to engage both individuals and groups. We’ll begin with an homage to our favorite shirt before participating in the material preparation and production necessary to transform strips of cloth – with their individual material histories – into a rug that signifies community and our lived histories.

This program is part of a year-long program series, Fiber to the People, which is funded in part by the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council and explores historical and sustainable textile production methods through classes, field trips, and partner events.

Maddy Bartsch is an artist, educator, and organizer of decentralized textile economies based in Minneapolis. She is a co-founder and Executive Director of the Three Rivers Fibershed, an affiliate branch of Fibershed, and is President of the Weavers Guild of Minnesota.

This project is supported by the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council.

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Site(s)

The Commons 425 Portland Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55415

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Hours

9pm - 2am each night
Maddy Bartsch
(b.) Hortonville, MN
(works) Minneapolis
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