AAFG 2024-25 Meeting Programs

Membership Meetings:
Held the 2nd Monday, September – May, no December meeting.
Social time begins at 6:30 p.m. Program starts at 7 p.m.
We meet at Zion Lutheran Church in the Gathering Room (2nd floor)
1501 W. Liberty Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
For Zoom presentations, members will be sent an email with the Zoom link.

Meeting Formats
In-Person = Program will be held in person at Zion Lutheran Church.
Zoom = Presentation and participation will be held exclusively via Zoom. (We will not meet in person.)

Monthly Schedule 

Monday, September 9, 2024 (In-Person)
“A Fiber Art Gathering”
AAFG members Jean Hosford, Shannon Ross Albers, Carolyn Michaels, Carol Repasky, and Robin Wilt will have tables set up to display their artwork. These artists will also be on hand to discuss their processes and the materials they use. Techniques include weaving, beading, needle felting, mixed-media, paper, and fiber. Come and admire their craft, ask questions about their techniques, watch demos, and get inspired for your future explorations.

Monday, October 14, 2024 (In-Person)
“Dimensional Weaving”
Martina Celerin
By combining weaving with needle felting and found objects, fiber artist Martina Celerin pushes the dimensional limits of wall art to create weaving-felting fusions that are 3D tapestries. Learn about the eclectic artistic background that informed her unique technique, as well as the memories, impressions, and inspirations that she recreates in her whimsical, ornate pieces.

Martina is a Bloomington, Indiana resident who took a long and unusual path to her current art career. She was born in Prague, in what is now the Czech Republic, and she immigrated to Canada as a young girl. After earning a doctoral degree in plant sciences from the University of Western Ontario, she accepted a postdoctoral position as a molecular geneticist in the Biology Department at Indiana University. During that time, she met and married her husband, and together they have two delightful boys, Tommie and Jacob. In 2002 she decided to transition from science back to her roots as an artist.

Her inspiration is drawn from both nature and her imagination; some pieces are scenes taken from memories of family walks or places she has visited. Others are much more abstract, capturing an idea, a personality or simply reflecting the feelings evoked by an event or geographical area. All of the pieces, though, are true weavings, integrating the materials, landscapes or emotions she’s drawn from her travels and experiences.
martinacelerin.com

Monday, November 11, 2024 (In-Person)
“Felt: An Ancient Material for Modern Creations”
Dawn Edwards
Learn about the world history of international felting techniques from a masterful Michigan fiber artist.

Dawn is a felt artist and tutor based in Plainwell, Michigan USA. She sells her work under the label “Felt So Right” and teaches extensively within the USA and internationally. Her felt art has appeared in numerous exhibitions, shows, magazines, and books including Ellen Bakker’s book Worldwide Colours of Felt, several issues of the Australian FELT Magazine, the International Feltmakers Association Felt Matters journal, the HGA journal Shuttle, Spindle & Dyepot, and the Russian magazine Felt Fashion. She has had several works juried into Fiber Art Now’s “Felt: Fiber Transformed,” including her felt vessels “The Earth Beneath My Feet” (2022 issue) and her “Blue Coral” felt hat (2019 issue). Several of her beaded felt hats were chosen to appear in the International Feltmakers Association (IFA) “Reconnect” Exhibition.
feltsoright.com 

Saturday, January 13, 2025 (Zoom)
“The Give and Take of Social Fabric”
Rachel Breen
By repurposing fabric, clothing, and found objects, Rachel creates projects and spaces for cultivating deeper understandings of labor rights, solidarity, and collective power. Discover how her focus on textiles creates a material connection to textile workers, the global impact of capitalism, and all of our shared histories in this insightful lecture.

Rachel’s work has been shown widely across the country as well as internationally. Her exhibitions include a solo exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 2020. Her exhibition “The Price of Our Clothes” at the Perlman Museum was included in the Top 20 – Best of 2018 Exhibitions in the U.S. by Hyperallergic. Rachel was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to India in 2022 and has been awarded an artist residency at MacDowell, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Willapa Bay AiR. Rachel is an inaugural recipient of the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, and has received four Minnesota State Arts Board grants, as well as a fellowship from the Walker Art Center Open Field. Rachel’s social engagement projects have been presented across Minnesota, including two projects commissioned for Northern Spark, a public art festival addressing climate change in the state. Rachel holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota and a BA from Evergreen State College. She lives in Minneapolis, MN, maintains an active studio practice, and is a professor of art at Anoka Ramsey Community College.
rachelbreenart.com

Monday, February 10, 2025 (Zoom)
“Beadweaving”
Jenny Schu
This talented guild member uses handweaving with supplemental warps and beadweaving, often integrating all of her woven, knitted, stitched, beaded techniques together to create her own installed surroundings. Jenny will offer an insider’s glimpse at her beading techniques.

Jenny Schu has been beading, knitting, and sewing since elementary school. She joined her first weaver’s guild in high school, and proceeded to follow the needle and threads that guided her soul towards art school at the University of Michigan to focus on Fiber Art, along with a minor in Art History. Over the years Jenny has received awards, grants, artist residencies, opportunities for solo shows, and nationwide exhibits. She is a member of the Handweaver’s Guild of America, Michigan League of Handweavers, and the Ann Arbor Fiberarts Guild. Jenny has given many programs about her work (each one different and updated to what she’s most currently working on), she teaches some of her beadweaving techniques, but Jenny mostly loves to play in her home studio and allow her art pieces to seep out of her.
jennyschu.net 

Monday, March 10, 2025 (Zoom)
“Once Upon a Warp: From the Loom to the Runway”
Denise Kovnat
This lecture traces Denise’s weaving journey from concept to completion of a garment. Every year since 2008 she has given herself a challenge: Weave a garment (or two) that will be juried into the Convergence fashion show, part of the biennial conference of the Handweavers’ Guild of America. To date, she has been able to complete the task with some ups and downs along the way. Anyone who weaves or creates fabric or designs garments will relate.

A weaver since 1998, Denise Kovnat has taught virtually and at conferences and guilds across the United States, Canada, and Australia. She focuses on parallel threadings, collapse techniques, painted warps, and deflected doubleweave. In 2022, Denise published Weaving Outside the Box: 12 Projects for Creating Dimensional Cloth and created a workshop based on the projects in the book. She is most proud of helping to create the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center, which opened in Rochester, NY, in 2002.
denisekovnat.com

Monday, April 14, 2025 (In-Person)
“The American Metallic Fabric Company: 100 years of Wire Weaving on Cape Cod”
Sue McDowell
Sue is the descendent of Roger G. Edwards, Sr., who arrived on Cape Cod in 1933 to take on the management of the American Metallic Fabric Company. She will provide an overview of the wire weaving enterprise that thrived on Cape Cod from the 1880’s to the 1990’s, covering the history of the business and sharing anecdotes (and a few artifacts) of growing up around massive industrial looms and the talented machinists who kept them running.

Sue is a native Cape Codder who transplanted to Michigan in the mid-1980’s and continues to thrive in her adopted “home” state. She is an ice hockey coach, former IT Manager for the University of Michigan, and an artist whose choice of medium is ever evolving. She has worked with fused/engraved glass, needle felting, and more recently, weaving. Her art is always a response to the beauty of the natural world around us. Sue is also an active member of AAFG and shares her many skills with our Guild.

Monday, May 12, 2025 (In-Person)
“Celebrating Member Fiber Explorations”
The final meeting of the season invites all members to share fiber art projects they have been working on all year, and workshop participants are welcome to show their unique responses to the Guild workshops they attended. Wear your creations or bring the artwork you would like to display. There will also be a presentation of the upcoming lineup of workshops and speakers for 2025-26.