EGA is delighted to be sponsoring the speakers for The Textile Society of America virtual Stitch-ins. The TSA is hosting virtual lecture/discussion/stitch-in sessions on a variety of subjects which will interest many EGA members.
The next Textile Society of America Stitch-In will be on October 21 at 7pm Eastern and will feature guest Rachel Meginnes.
Rachel Meginnes grew up surrounded by hooked rugs made by her mother and grandmother. Cut from recycled wool cloth, these works hung on the walls and laid on the floors of her childhood home. From a young age, her eye was trained to see the potential in discarded materials and to have an appreciation for the histories these textiles could tell. Rachel’s current practice revolves around this idea of repurposing through her own collection, deconstruction, and reutilization of vintage textiles into wall-based works. Fascinated by the potential of what something can become, she transforms the structure and function of familiar objects.
Rachel received her BA in Art from Earlham College in 1999 and her MFA in Fibers from the University of Washington, Seattle in 2005. She spent two years studying traditional Japanese textile processes in Morioka, Japan. From 2005 – 2011, she co-owned and operated an international rug company based out of Sikkim, India and Seattle, WA. In 2012, Meginnes was awarded a three-year residency at Penland School of Craft which shifted her home base to the east coast. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally and can be found in the collections of the United States Art in Embassies Program in Amman, Jordan, the University of Arkansas, and the Cameron Art Museum. Rachel currently lives and works in Bakersville, North Carolina as an artist and creative coach.
Please join us! And invite others that you think would be interested– it’s free and open to the public!
Click Here to Learn more and Register
More about the Stitch-In series from the Textile Society of America
The Textile Society of America is launching a new “TSA Stitch-In” series starting February 2021. Each Stitch-In will be 1.5-2 hrs. long. For the first 45 minutes, we will be inviting a guest speaker to share their work and the remaining time will allow for informal group discussion. In the new virtual environment that we find ourselves due to the pandemic, scholarly and professional networking and interacting have become limited. Our biennial Symposium was successfully held virtually in October 2020 to excellent reviews. The presentations were able to go on with this format and it was a great week of scholarly sharing. Since the Symposium, we have been investigating new ways to enhance scholarly and professional interaction online. We are launching the “TSA Stitch In” series as a direct result as we found many of our members missed the informal discussion and meeting that naturally happens at an in-person event. Our Stitch-In will be held every other month and with the direct goal of providing a platform for TSA members whose work integrates stitching, whether with a focus on making, theory or history, to share their work and provide an online space for the sharing of ideas with textiles professionals to help encourage new directions in stitch-based artistic work and research. We hope to harness the positives of holding such events in a virtual environment to more broadly disseminate the work of current stitch-focused artists and researchers.
We are excited that the Embroiderers Guild of America has generously sponsored the six Stitch-In’s for 2021 in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To hear all the latest news about upcoming Stitch-In’s please subscribe to the TSA Stitch-In mail group at this link.
