Anderson Center Group Textile exhibition

The Anderson Center presents Material, a group exhibition of contemporary textile-based work by Minnesota artists featuring new approaches to traditional art forms and time-honored techniques. The exhibition opens on February 10 and runs through April 24, 2021. A free artist reception will take place Friday, April 9 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Refreshments will be provided.

Through sewing, crochet, piecework, and garment construction techniques, the artists featured in Material address timely themes that range from intersectional identities to a prevalence of plastic waste. Featured artists include Anna Carlson, Dawn Zero Erickson, Su Legatt, Ka Oskar Ly, and Erik Jon Olson.

“Women artists and artists from non-Western backgrounds have long demonstrated that these methods belong in conversations about contemporary art. Sewing, needlework, and functional processes have been considered ‘craft’ techniques by some, implying that they are somehow lesser than ‘fine’ art,” says curator Stephanie Rogers. “The artists featured in this exhibition are building from a decades-long, national conversation about art that includes people such as Ruth Asawa and Faith Ringgold. The use of soft materials, surface decoration, pattern, and familiar and domestic forms is evocative in and of itself. The artists featured in Material build on the ideas associated with these techniques and forms, moving this important art historical conversation forward in our place and time.”

Handicapped accessible and free to the public, the Main Gallery at the Anderson Center is open Wednesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. (beginning Feb. 10). This exhibit is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.  This invitational show has been curated by Stephanie Lynn Rogers. Featured image: Dawn Zero Erickson