Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons^™

Maa’: An Analysis From The May Weber Ethnographic Study Collection, Claire T. Chilla

Department of Anthropology

An analysis of Maa’ textiles from Sulawesi Indonesia. Discusses both the artistic symbolism, possible physical creation, and the spiritual connection of the textile for the Torajans. Informs through the lens of globalization, colonization, and funerary practices from the country of origin.

Tracings, Masie Sophia Love

Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, the artist wonders what it means to remember a time and place that she has not experienced- what would this look like visualized in a painting? Love studies the histories and similarities between cartography and quilting using the two as a kind of channel to understand, record, and remember land. She explores inherited memory and the clues left behind in the form of quilts made by ancestors to create abstracted landscapes and maps of Tennessee where they lived for generations.

Memory Organs, Coco Ma

Theses and Dissertations

Working across architectural sculpture, sonic works, and monoprints, this thesis explores the body as a site where memory, materiality, and cultural history converge. Drawing from muscle memory, Chinese architectural thresholds, and female narratives, it traces a body that is simultaneously physical and psychological, personal and collective, constant yet always shifting.

Embodied Archives: Cultural Memory And Material Rhetoric In Dindga Mccannon’S Fiber Arts Practice, Mary Lisette Morris

Theses and Dissertations

“Embodied Archives: Cultural Memory and Material Rhetoric in Dindga McCannon’s Fiber Arts Practice” examines mixed-media artist Dindga McCannon’s interdisciplinary career and practice. It argues that her research-driven homages to Black women’s lives and achievements challenge divisions of fine art and craft through cultural memory, material rhetoric, and textile-based archival strategies.

Cannibalizing The American Dream: Memory, Materials, And Manifesting, Juan Hinojosa

Theses and Dissertations

Juan Hinojosa’s thesis explores collage and assemblage through discarded materials, pop culture, and personal history. He transforms found objects into layered works that reflect consumption, memory, and American identity. Moving between sculpture, painting, and installation, his practice examines excess, nostalgia, and the tension between what is consumed and what consumes him.

5010, Clare Hu

Theses and Dissertations

Working with the structure of a table top, Clare Hu churns through digital image and woven cloth, asking how much each medium can bear.

Public Art And Military Technology At The Mexico-U.S. Border: Disrupting Boundaries On Battlegrounds, Anna Luise Kaunert

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how contemporary artists Rubén Ortiz Torres, Chico MacMurtrie, rafa esparza, and Cassils transformed military technologies into powerful artworks that interrogate the Mexico-U.S. border as a battlefield. Together, their works illuminate militarization and surveillance technologies at the border and the violent enforcement of U.S. immigration policy.

Nasty, Mya L. Correa

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

I am exploring artwork about women’s power and sexuality, centering on hair. I’m interested in how hair carries history and how it has been used to control and frighten women. I’ve been reading feminist artists’ books and researching their findings alongside my own work. Drawing on my personal history, my mother’s story, and the experience of raising my daughters, I consider how my children’s lives differ from mine and my mother’s, and what those differences reveal.

Hair has long been wielded as a weapon to enforce expectations on women’s bodies by a society afraid of losing control. As creators of …

Desert Ghost, Jessica Downs

All Theses

This thesis explores the relationship between landscape, memory, and the body through handmade paper installations inspired by the deserts of southwestern Utah. Drawing from personal experience of place and the loss of a childhood home, the work considers how environments are internalized and persist as shifting, sensory impressions rather than fixed geographies. The desert becomes a generative site for examining presence, transformation, and the passage of time, both geologic and personal.

I use handmade paper and installation to translate my experience of place into physical form. Paper serves as both material and metaphor; its fibers, textures, and muted tones emulate …

Aubusson Weaves Tolkien: The Woven Adventure, Nancy Martsch

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Aubusson weaves Tolkien. The woven adventure/ Aubusson tisse Tolkien. L’aventure tissée: review of the catalogue of the exhibition held at the Cité Internationale de la Tapisserie in Aubusson, France, June 28 - September 30, 2024. The exhibition showcased 14 tapestries and 2 carpets based on Tolkien's illustrations. This catalogue is available in both French and English editions.

Pop Art's Influences On 1960s Mod Fashion, Erin Bryan

Create@State

Abstract

I will be exploring how the pop art movement, in particular, influenced the fashion associated with the 1960s Mod style. This style was popular among young people in Britain, as the term “Mod” is short for “Modernist”, and featured bold colors, geometric motifs, sharp lines, as well as slim and simple silhouettes.  I will be creating my own 1960s mini dress, following a vintage pattern from that time, and using fabric that reflects the bright, geometric, and colorful characteristics of pop art, all while documenting my progress. Not only will I be capturing the visual similarities between this art …

Weaving With Color Theory, Clay Johnson

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

In Fall of 2026 I have been taking an Advanced Drawing class where we are making art with string. The emphasis so far has been to create weavings using different color theories and patterns. We have also tried different weaving techniques, using the Inkle Loom, tapestry loom, and the table loom. Using the different looms have been challenging but rewarding to gain new skills. Weaving in a drawing class helps us think outside of just the charcoal and paper, but how we can approach other art with the drawing techniques we have learned such as color theory.

Woven Color: Historical Uses Of Color Theory Woven Into Fiber Art Practice, Mary K. Greenwood

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

This semester-long project, created in Material Exploration, examines the use of historical color theory within contemporary fiber art to evoke emotion and narrative. Drawing from established color systems, artistic movements, and artist inspirations, the work explores how color relationships, such as harmony, contrast, and saturation, can communicate mood and meaning. Through experimentation with textile materials and processes, each piece integrates intentional color schemes to enhance storytelling through both visual and tactile elements. Ultimately, the project highlights how applying historical color theory within fiber art can deepen emotional resonance and connect traditional practices with contemporary expression.

Color Clash: When Opposites Create Harmony, Zachary Dean Esslinger

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

Opposites attract is usually the saying and the same can be said for colors. Complimentary colors are pairs directly opposite each other on the color wheel. Warm versus cool, bright versus high intensity these are things that stand out when these colors are paired together Red/Green, Yellow/Purple, Blue/Orange and subsequently any hues, values and tints can be used as well. complementary color pairs, but if looking at a color wheel there are twelve consisting of your three primary and the othernine coming from different hues.

Color Layering And Weaving, Crystal Barron-Calva

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

Color theory is the body of knowledge of colors and their behaviors. This presents as color schemes, color harmonies, and color application. We explore an analysis of color harmonies using weaving as a medium to display how colors interact in fiber art.

The purpose of this research is to explore how color theory is and can be applied to textiles and fiber arts. Using the same materials but using two weaving styles and techniques to explore how tension, size, and pattern affect the use of colors. This exploration approaches color relativity and color layering using the two weaving techniques of …

Belle Époque French Fashion: Understanding French Clothing Labels In Historical American Media, Meg E. Smith

Scholars Week

A period of French prosperity know as the Belle Epoque followed the Franco-Prussain War from 1871-1914. Within this time, Parisian Fashion would blossom and flourish with couturiers, fashion designers, rising in fame and influence within textile and clothing markets. Credit to this prosperity can be given to the second industrial revolution, the end of a long depression, and a dominating industry of luxury market goods production in tandem with a sharp increase in foreign trade. Foreign media, such as American newspapers, would display the array of reactions to the success of Parisian styles. Retail progression and the commercialization of leisure …

Risk Society, Chloe Nealon

2026 MFA Visual Arts

No abstract provided.

Antecedents And Consequences Of Consumer Behavior In Circular Fashion: Cognitive, Normative, And Behavioral Pathways Shaping Purchase And Participation Intentions, Mahmudul Hasan Sabuj

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The increasing environmental impact of the fashion industry has intensified the need for a systemic transition from linear to circular production and consumption models. Despite growing interest in circular fashion, there remains a limited understanding of the underlying behavioral dimensions that drive consumer engagement in sustainable practices. Grounded in the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Norm Activation Theory (NAT), this study examines consumer behavior through an integrated framework capturing cognitive, social, and normative influences.

Using data collected from a structured online survey (N = 575), the study employs Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), reliability analysis, and multiple regression techniques to …

Art Exhibition Of Metals And Fabric, Heather Nguyen

Knowledge and Creativity Expo

Heather Nguyen is an undergraduate senior majoring in 3D media and Material Studies. They will be exhibiting two artworks made of metal and fabric.

Bemerge Pop Ups: Social Media Meets Sustainable Fashion, Owen Mehring, Kyla Echols, Avery Edelbrock

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Our research into the online clothing shopping industry has revealed an opportunity to mobilize the strengths of online shopping to build an in-person community. One company we researched, Poshmark, a social, peer-to-peer resale app, uses the strengths of social media to create an online community-based secondhand clothing market. However, one of the largest problems facing society today is the ease of replacing human connection with screen time in today’s world. Online shopping provides convenience, variety, and a larger reach than traditional stores do. However, the human element is often lost. Our company seeks to take the goal of Poshmark to …

Bio-Based Textiles: From Waste To Runway, Leah L. Mella Mrs., Laziza S. Shamansurova, Kory Lynn Abramowitz Ms

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Have you ever wondered what it’s like wearing fabric made from orange peels? What about mushrooms? Sustainable bio textiles are defined as “a broad category of fabrics made from renewable, natural biomass—including plants, animals, algae, or bacteria.” The purpose of this study is to explore various bio based textiles such as orange peel fabric, algae fabric, and bacterial cellulose fabric. Given that the world is currently experiencing a severe climate crisis driven by pollution and carbon emissions, we need sustainable solutions now more than ever. To prevent further damage to our planet, we need to adopt more sustainable practices, and …

Circular Textiles: How You Can Bamboo It, Corley Ballard, Sophie Ellyson, Hannah Berg, Brennan Werner

SPARK Symposium Presentations

“Circular Fashion” and “sustainability” are loosely thrown around in today’s culture, both online and in-person, but circular fashion goes far beyond common sustainability practices. It is a completely waste-free, closed-loop system of textile production and manufacturing. This presentation will focus on circular fashion, a system of reusing and recycling textiles to eliminate waste. We will take a look at its place in the fashion industry and how it interacts within the world of textile production, and give clarity on what we can do about it. We are exploring sustainability, manufacturing, and the processes by which fibers are recycled or blended. …

Craft, Love, And Loathing: Anthropology Of Hair Art In The Twenty-First Century, Eugene Kauffman

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

When hair is cut off and used in art, many people find it disgusting, but when attached, hair is seen as beautiful. Over time, these ideas have changed; in the Victorian Era, people had more tolerance and appreciation for different types of hair art, such as sculptures and accessories. In order to analyze these changes and why hair is seen as repulsive, we must look at theories of disgust and abjection. In addition, we must look at the history of bodily art and the connections it had to death and mourning. The understanding and recognition of abject mediums such as …

Dressing For The Descent: Costume Designing Eurydice, Hannah Olivia Schoen

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film: Theses, Student Research, and Creative Work

During the early spring of my second graduate year, I was assigned to be costume designer for the upcoming production of Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice. Eurydice is a retelling of a narrative that had been mostly given spotlight to the male hero in past iterations. Now we as a design team were going to tell the story from Eurydice’s point of view. After doing an analysis and research into details that would give me ideas on how I wanted to present these characters, I was able to present initial ideas to the director at our first design meeting.The design process …

The Space Between Seams, Rachel M. Clarke

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Through the use of form, softly muted colors, and play with transparent materials, I create ethereal drawings and immersive installation experiences. I work with the softness in fabric and the controlled detail in drawing. In doing so, I am enveloping myself in the drive to create, pushing the viewer to be spatially aware of their bodies existing in space.

This body of work exists as I am processing the state of my own body. We engage and perceive the world through our bodies. The fabric panels I create call to the porosity and permeability of human skin. The skin contains …

Sam Boakye, Mark Naison, Anthony Abd-Al Shafi Rosado

Oral Histories

At the end of the interview, Boakye explains what he wants for Kwasi Paul in the future, both in the Bronx and in the fashion industry. For the Bronx, he wants it to represent Ghanaian fashion, something Ghanaians in the Bronx can be proud of. He wants the Bronx to be seen as something better, not a “dirty” borough, as stereotypes would have it. For fashion, he wants to be another lens of living with in-between identities, for everyone who falls into these categories of multiple identities, especially for people in New York City.

He encapsulates the Bronx as “The …

Ideas Y Materialidades Que Viajan. Las Cabezas Como Contenedoras De Poder En Las Sociedades Malagana, Nazca Y Huari, Catalina Simmonds Caldas, Sonia Blanco, Marisa Sánchez David

Actas seleccionadas del SIMPOSIO ARTE 4.2: Migraciones en la imagen prehispánica: transitando territorios del pasado al presente. 58º Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Novi Sad, Serbia, 2025.

Un cuenco en cerámica perteneciente a la sociedad Malagana (800 a. C. – 600 d. C.), – Suroccidente de Colombia – y cuya descripción es el de ser un contenedor con cabezas antropomorfas circundantes, adheridas a su contorno, quizá esté vinculado a los aspectos conceptuales e ideológicos que encarna en las sociedades Nazca (s. I - VII d. C.) y Nazca-Huari (500 – 700 d. C.) el culto a las cabezas-trofeo; de ser así, se puede presuponer en estas sociedades distintas, un uso ritual asociado al concepto de la cabeza como materialización de formas de poder. Respecto a esta noción …

Las Representaciones Florales En Los Bordados De La Indumentaria Cuzqueña, Nathalie Santisteban-Delgado

Actas seleccionadas del SIMPOSIO ARTE 4.2: Migraciones en la imagen prehispánica: transitando territorios del pasado al presente. 58º Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Novi Sad, Serbia, 2025.

Los vestidos indígenas cuzqueños contemporáneos se caracterizan por tener decoraciones iconográficas variadas. Es la representación floral decorativa que destaca por el color, el diseño y la forma. El motivo floral aparece adornando tanto los vestidos de las imágenes santas de la pintura cuzqueña (siglos XVII y XVIII) como la ropa de los incas nobles retratados durante la colonia. Este estudio tiene como objetivo mostrar que existe una continuidad estética andina, a partir de la identificación de las especies florales utilizadas en las expresiones artísticas virreinales y de la comparación con las especies florales empleadas en la decoración del vestido tradicional …

Las Representaciones Figurativas Del Sitio Arqueológico Cuidad Del Jaguar (Honduras): Espacio Sagrado, Conceptos Compartidos Y Diálogo Entre Mesoamérica Y La Zona Andina, Geydy Rodríguez Wood

Actas seleccionadas del SIMPOSIO ARTE 4.2: Migraciones en la imagen prehispánica: transitando territorios del pasado al presente. 58º Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Novi Sad, Serbia, 2025.

El sitio arqueológico Ciudad del Jaguar-T1, se encuentra ubicado en el noroeste de Honduras. Pertenece al Área Intermedia, considerada zona de frontera y paso entre Mesoamérica y la Zona Andina. Esta ubicación facilitó que, durante la época prehispánica, fuese un sitio de migraciones e interacción constante entre culturas del norte y del sur del continente, que dio origen a una civilización hasta ahora desconocida, que se formó, desarrolló y tuvo una significativa producción artística. En el presente trabajo propongo el estudio y la lectura e interpretación de las imágenes figurativas representadas en los objetos excavados, como también su utilidad y …

El Papel De Tonantzin-Guadalupe En La Conservación Del Pensamiento Nahua Durante La Cristianización De Mesoamérica, Marina Valls I García

Actas seleccionadas del SIMPOSIO ARTE 4.2: Migraciones en la imagen prehispánica: transitando territorios del pasado al presente. 58º Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Novi Sad, Serbia, 2025.

Dentro de este ciclo de estudios sobre la imagen del poder se aprovecha la ocasión para focalizar en el estudio de la imagen religiosa de la Virgen de Guadalupe y su papel en la conversión del México precolombino. Partiendo de la base antropológica en que el poder siempre es respaldado por la religión de una cultura, profundizamos a entender como este proceso “político” es mimetizado y acompañado no solo por la creación de una imagen de poder religioso sino por diversas luchas de poder entre el pensamiento nahua y el católico, así como entre las distintas órdenes cristianas que participan …