The Textile Center in Minneapolis has one goal—and that’s to get you pumped about fiber art. Wait wait, don’t go! Fiber art encompasses more than you probably think, from avant-garde art installations and gorgeously embroidered textiles to trendy overdyed rugs and macramé plant hangers. If you’re even a smidge interested in fashion, interior design, or the history of textiles, you’re in for a treat.
At the heart of the 25-year-old organization are three galleries with rotating exhibitions. Fiber artist Janice Jakielski combines quilling, pleating, and embroidery to eye-catching effect with Rose Colored, whose flower-goggled creation is pictured below. In Out of Reach, Suzanna Scott binds, stuffs, stitches, layers, and mounts dozens of vintage leather and fabric gloves on an aluminum grate. Wone Vang, one half of the sister-sister dream team behind 3rd Daughter Restless Daughter, does cheerful cross-stitching on chicken wire and kitchen strainers. Her subversive needlepoint Twitter quotes from Kanye West (“Sometimes I get emotional over fonts”) and Nick Wiger (“Catering a White House event with 300 fast food burgers would be a set piece in a movie where a kid becomes president”) are refreshingly affordable at $50 a pop.
Exhibition space aside, the Textile Center houses the Pat O’Connor Library, one of the largest circulating textile libraries in the nation; the HQ of the Weavers Guild of Minnesota, a lauded society for “the advanced art of weaving, spinning, and dyeing”; and classrooms for workshops on every fiber topic imaginable (shibori, Moroccan embroidery, block printing, rug hooking, millinery feather flowers, etc.). Get a membership and you’ll save 10 percent on all classes.
Last stop should be the gallery shop, which sells hand-stitched greeting cards, packets of rare and beautiful vintage buttons, and playful tassel earrings by local maker Anna Doherty of Semi Celebration.
Textile Center
3000 University Ave. SE., Ste. 100, Minneapolis, MN; 612-436-0464.