Fiber Artist speaks at Glen Arbor Art Association

From staff reports

Fiber artist Rachel Meginnes from San Francisco will present her Artist-in-Residence talk for the public on Thursday, June 23, at 7:30pm, at the Glen Arbor Art Association building on Studio Lane across from Cherry Republic. The program is free and light refreshment will be served.

Meginnes received her MFA in Fibers from the University of Washington and her BFA from Earlham College, in Richmond, IN. She held teaching assistantships at both institutions. Meginnes grew up in rural Vermont and trained there with a local weaver, who became an important mentor. She learned about natural dyeing and Kilim rug weaving before moving to Japan to further her craft. She studied ikat, indigo dyeing and saki-ori (Japanese rag weaving). Included in her world travels was New Zealand where she worked on a sheep farm learning about wool production. Next stop for her was Maine where she learned the shaft-switching weaving technique. With further travel to Nepal to research the Tibetan rug industry she decided to go into business herself and co-founded the Dorje Contemporary, LLC, an international rug company in Seattle and Sikkim, India, where she is the principal rug designer and business manager.

In her most recent oeuvre, Works on Cloth, she uses a technique whereby she “individually removes thread from the fabric to alter its inherent structure … Obsessed with process and the resulting deterioration of surface, Meginnes works the cloth from front to back, sanding gesso, ink, and paint into the fabric … The final piece thus becomes an exploration into chaos and control and an artifact of process”.

In her residency in Glen Arbor, Meginnes intends to use the natural setting of Thoreson Farm and its pastoral surroundings as her inspiration for color and content in creating a series of 4-6 works.