MARIANNE FAIRBANKS
Weaving Lab is a project first initiated by Marianne Fairbanks in 2016 and ran for two summers in Madison, WI. In 2019 it has transitioned to a mobile, traveling to new locations domestically and internationally including Oak Park, IL, Oslo, Norway, Copenhagen, Denmark and Gothenburg, Sweden.
Marianne Fairbanks is a visual artist, designer, curator and Assistant Professor of Design Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BFA from the University of Michigan. Her work spans the fields of art, design, and social practice, seeking to chart new material and conceptual territories, to innovate solution-based design, and to foster fresh modes of cultural production.
ERICA HESS
2017 and 2019 -research assistant, graphic design
Erica Hess lives and works in Madison, Wisconsin. She received her M.F.A at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where she focused on printmaking, textiles, and sculpture. She is a co-founder of the collective printmaking space, Polka Press.
Hess uses metal, wood, cloth, concrete and paper to build objects that abstractly address impermanence and the body. Her work develops from a process-based relationship to materials and a sense of scale in proportion to the viewer’s body. She is interested in the stories objects can tell and how these things can orient us in time and space. How do we reconcile our bodies as objects with the life of objects and forms that surround us? She is frequently grappling with the ongoing deterioration of our bodies while continuing to create art objects.
KAT BUNKE
2017 and 2019- research assistant
Kat Bunke graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2017 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and a Certificate in Gender and Women’s Studies. She specializes in printmaking and fiber art, and focuses much of her time on her small business Kat Bunke Art where she combines thrifted plastic and handmade crochet work into whimsical jewelry. Her underlying goal is to recycle forms of plastic often thrown to the wayside, and to bring nostalgia and play back into adult life.
She resides in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her partner and two cats
SOFIA HAGSTRÖM MØLLER
2019 (DENMARK)- research assistant
Sofia Hagström Møller is a textile artist who delves into a world of woven textural and fibre structures. In 2007 she finished her degree at Denmark’s Design School and has since then worked primarily with woven objects as artworks, both for exhibitions, as well as bespoke artworks for the decoration of public spaces and commercial environments.When Sofia is not in her own workshop, she works as educator in hand weaving, teaching courses in Copenhagen, as well as various weaving schools around Denmark. Sofia lives in Copenhagen together with her husband and their two kids.