Fiber

Jason Pollen, professor and chair of the fiber department at KCAI, paints and prints with dyes on silk, creating lustrous, vibrant,...Read More

Jason Pollen, professor and chair of the fiber department at KCAI, paints and prints with dyes on silk, creating lustrous, vibrant, colorful abstract works that are exhibited in the U.S. as well as abroad. He also designs prints for the surface design and textile industry.

Pollen has had several solo exhibitions in Europe and the United States, including the Temple Gallery in Philadelphia and, in Kansas City, the Leedy Voulkos Gallery, the Gallery of Fine Arts, the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Dolphin Gallery, which currently represents him.

His recent group exhibitions include Reed Whipple Cultural Center Gallery in Las Vegas, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Lodz Textile Museum in Poland; and the Max Berk Museum in Heidelberg, Germany.

He has received several awards and grants including an NEA-MAA in 1989, and he was the first-place winner from the U.S. in the 1992 Japanese Fashion Foundation-sponsored International Textile Design Competition. In the same year, he received the Italian Idea Como award for most outstanding printed fabric.

Major installations, collections, and commissions include the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Hallmark Cards, Inc., The H&R Block Foundation in Kansas City and Printmaker International, Ltd. in New York. Pollen serves as president of the Surface Design Association, an international organization of fiber artists and textile designers.

Pollen spent 10 years in Paris, London, Zurich and Madras as an artist and textile designer. Before joining the KCAI faculty in 1983, he served on the faculty at the Royal College of Art, Pratt Institute and the Parsons School of Design in New York. He regularly lectures and teaches workshops throughout the U.S, Canada and Europe.

As a designer, he has created printed fabrics for Yves Saint Laurent, Perry Ellis, Wamsutta Sheets, Jim Thompson Thai Silks in Bangkok and Jack Lenor Larsen furnishing fabrics.

Pollen earned B.F.A. and master's degrees from the City College of New York.

Contact: 816-802-3343 or jpollen@kcai.edu

Pauline Verbeek-Cowart, a native of the Netherlands, received her BFA (1982) in Fine Art from the Maryland Institute and her MFA in...Read More

Pauline Verbeek-Cowart, a native of the Netherlands, received her BFA (1982) in Fine Art from the Maryland Institute and her MFA in textile design from the University of Kansas (1995). After teaching at the University of Kansas she joined the faculty of the Kansas City Art Institute, where she has been developing the area of constructed textiles since 1997. Pauline was on the board of the Surface Design Association and coordinated two (2000 & 2003) textile conferences, which took place on the Campus of the Kansas City Art Institute. She is one of the leaders in the use of new technologies in hand-weaving and is actively researching Jacquard applications using industrial looms in The Netherlands and the US.

Most of her weavings span several feet in both directions and comment on the nature of woven surfaces. Through structure, material, image and/or surface treatments, she demonstrates that weaving is unique in building an image. Her industrially woven work crosses boundaries between Fine Art and applied textiles and is directed toward structurally textured fabrics for apparel as well as home-furnishings. Her work has been exhibited extensively in both national and international venues including France, Germany, Japan and Korea.

She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Kansas City Art Institute's Excellence in teaching award (2007) and most recently the 2008 Kansas Arts Commission Master Fellowship. Her work is in private and corporate collections and has been featured in books and publications such as Fiberarts Design Book, American Craft Magazine, Fiberarts Magazine, Surface Design Journal, Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot and Textileforum.

Contact: 816-802-3342 or pcowart@kcai.edu

  Kim Eichler-Messmer received her M.F.A. in textiles from the University of Kansas in 2007 and her B.F.A. in drawing and...Read More

 

Kim Eichler-Messmer received her M.F.A. in textiles from the University of Kansas in 2007 and her B.F.A. in drawing and printmaking from Iowa State University in 2002. She was an artist in residence at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tenn., in 2007-2008. Her work has been exhibited nationally in shows such as Quilt Visions 2008 in San Diego, Art Quilts Elements in Wayne, Pa., and Fiber National 2007 in Lancaster, Pa.

Her large- and small-scale quilts for the wall are hand dyed and screen-printed. Her work is inspired by patterns and repetition in the natural world, in architecture, in music, in the routine of daily life and in the ebb and flow of time. Repeated imagery, frayed edges, translucent overlays and hand stitching are standard elements in her work.

 

Tracy Krumm's work has been exhibited internationally in numerous galleries and museums, including the Central Museum of Textiles in...Read More

Tracy Krumm's work has been exhibited internationally in numerous galleries and museums, including the Central Museum of Textiles in Lodz, Poland; the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague; the Odder Museum in Denmark; the Museum of Art and Design in New York; the Denver Art Museum; the Susquehanna Art Museum in Harrisburg, Pa.; The Museum of Fine Art in Santa Fe, N.M.; the Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, Wis.; The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art; Andrea Schwartz Gallery in San Francisco; Lemmons Contemporary in New York; Linda Durham Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, N.M.; Robischon Gallery in Denver; and Cervini Haas in Scottsdale, Ariz.

From 2006 to 2008, she served as a visiting assistant professor of art and design at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Prior to this, she was a lecturer at KCAI from 2003 to 2006 in the fiber department, and since 1991 she has taught numerous workshops at venues such as Haystack in Deer Isle, Maine; the Penland School in Penland, N.C., Arrowmont in Gatlinburg, Tenn.; and Anderson Ranch, in Snowmass, Colo. She has been a guest artist and lecturer at numerous institutions such as the Cranbrook Academy of Art, the Memphis College of Art, the California College of the Arts, the University of California at Santa Cruz and the University of Montana in Missoula. She has been awarded residencies by Pyramid Atlantic in Silver Spring, Md.; the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, N.M.; and the State of New York at ArtPark.

Krumm completed her B.F.A. with high distinction at the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1987 and received her M.F.A. in visual arts from Vermont College in 1995. Her work has been featured in numerous publications including Metalsmith, Sculpture, American Craft, Fiberarts, Surface Design Journal and Textile Forum magazines and resides in many private and corporate collections including Bloomingdale's, the Museum of Art and Design in New York, the Denver Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts of New Mexico, the Clorox Corporation and Ford Motor Company. Four of her site specific large scale textile-based installations, made with the help of public participants as part of "Big Fiber: Human Tools," were installed in 2007 and 2008 at The Museums of New Mexico's Milner Plaza and the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, N.M.

Peggy Noland began her academic career studying religious studies at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, but soon changed her mind to...Read More

Peggy Noland began her academic career studying religious studies at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, but soon changed her mind to pursue a decidedly different discipline: fashion.

For the last three years and counting, the self-taught designer sells her avant garde but playful line of clothing in her boutique, Peggy Noland Kansas City, located in the heart of Kansas City's Crossroads art district. Her store's environment is worth the trip alone, as you'll find yourself engulfed in a giant cheeseburger or on a bed of poly-fill clouds depending on that month's instillation. She is recognized as a leader in Kansas City's creative community. Pitch awarded Peggy a Mastermind Award in 2006, and she's consistently costuming collaboratively with Kansas City's own, SSION and Whoop Dee Doo, both headed by KCAI alumni.

Although Noland is a fixture in her city's art scene, her clothing is also widely recognized outside of the Kansas City scope. National publications including Nylon, Missbehave, Lucky, Spin, Rolling Stone and XLR8R, and international publications like Japanese Elle, British Elle, WWD, WGSN and Dazed and Confused have featured Noland's pieces. Her work will be published in three books in the fall of 2010. Noland recently was invited to lecture during Hallmark Cards Color Week for the Trends Department.

She maintains her largest clientele in Moscow and Tokyo via her retail Web site, peggynoland.com, and indie rock stars Lovefoxxx of CSS from Brazil and Kianna Alarid of Tilly and the Wall employ Noland as their official tour costumier.

Noland's clothing is featured in the video below in which Tilly and the Wall sing the ABCs on Sesame Street.

 

Noland designed the clothing worn by CSS in the Nike commercial below.