Held alongside our exhibition Nordic Echoes — Tradition in Contemporary Art, the first major traveling exhibition of contemporary Nordic artist traditions from the Upper Midwest, join us for a panel discussion with four artists featured in the show: Amber M. Jensen, Christine Novotny, and Lisa Wiitala. With exhibition curator Sally Yerkovich, they’ll discuss their works in the show and their respective practices as well as Nordic textile traditions.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Amber M. Jensen is a painter, textile artist and teacher working out of her Minneapolis studio. She’s inspired by the nature around her, and the throughline she can trace from our ancestors’ blankets to her own work today. She was recently awarded a fellowship in textile arts from the McKnight Foundation and is a former Jerome Foundation fellow. Her journey into textiles began nearly two decades with the creation of one-of-a-kind bespoke backpacks that have since evolved into complex and individual pieces of wearable art. In devotion to her daily art practice, she has also created wall-sized weavings and paintings embellished with stories and symbols. She has exhibited her work in numerous group shows from Tokyo to Paris and led a solo show last fall at the Watermark Art Center in Bemidji, Minn. Her commitment to sharing her love of weaving has taken her to All My Relations Arts in Minneapolis, the Blandin Foundation in Grand Rapids, an icy lake for an Art Shanty project and the North House Folk School in Grand Marais, Minn. Her work is an invitation for viewers to join her in a fantastical world of imagination that’s grounded in the often elusive sense of place, home and shelter.
Christine Novotny is a textile artist, designer and educator. She weaves vibrant textiles, all guided by her love for surprising color and design interactions. From rugs and blankets to fine art work, each of her pieces explore color nuance and relationships through materiality and traditional techniques. Her designs are guided intuitively by the physical practice of different woven processes, finding bold, graphic forms in tapestry and loom-controlled designs, and sensitivity and atmospheric movement in rya pile weavings. Christine’s weavings explore not “if” colors work together, but how they interact, seeking unexpected color nuance and relationships in woven form.
Lisa Wiitala is a fourth generation Finnish American weaver, writer, and teacher, living in Hancock, Michigan. With a passion for education and the natural world, she holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a Master of Arts in Secondary Education. In her 40s, she acquired her grandmother’s antique floor loom and learned to weave through study at Finlandia University and the Finnish American Folk School. In keeping with her heritage, she focuses on rag rugs and ryijy rugs, the latter of which derive their subject matter from natural elements found in the Keweenaw Peninsula. She has taken part in various local exhibitions, including Art from the Kalevela and Friends of Finland; has demonstrated both rag rug and ryijy rug weaving at local and regional events from Heikinpäivä to FinnFest USA; and has taught ryijy weaving for the Finnish American Folk School. A member of the Buellwood Weaver’s Guild, she was featured in the documentary Finnish American Rag Rug Weavers, and in 2022 presented a webinar for FinnFest USA entitled From Rags to Rugs: My Grandmother’s Loom. In 2023, she traveled to Finland to study advanced ryijy design through a grant from the American Scandinavian Foundation.