Connecting to WARP Leadership

Our April blog introduces you to a new board member and two nominees. Janice G Knausenberger will fulfill the term left open by the resignation of Devik Wyman. Mariana Mace and Carrie Miller have been nominated to run for two open board positions and if approved by the membership in June, both will serve on the WARP board for three-year terms.

Janice shares her story…
I have always loved plants, nature, art and needed to keep my hands busy. I grew up in California, where I graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, in Biology. I received my Master’s in Entomology from Virginia Tech. While there, I took short courses in basics of weaving and spinning, courses that helped change my life. We then moved to St. Croix, USVI, where we began raising our family. After a health crisis, weaving became my source of self-expression and creativity. I also taught weaving at a local high school.

In 2000, we moved to Kenya where I mostly worked with Kenyan weavers in techniques, production and design while I continued to produce new pieces on my own looms. I also consulted with ICIPE (International Consortium of Insect Physiology and Ecology) in Nairobi on silk. In 2008, Laura Lemunyete and my article on the Revival of Rendille/Samburu Baskets of Northern Kenya was published by the Kenya Museum Society. My years in Africa were filled with discovery, inspiration, and new friends.

In the summer of 2010, we returned to Maryland where I was later elected to be president of the Weaver’s Guild of Greater Baltimore. I continue to create art through my weavings, pushing limits and exhibiting and selling my work. I continue to travel to Kenya to see friends and consult with weavers there. I am energized when others share what they know in the fiber arts and love sharing what I know.

What I bring to WARP
I am most comfortable in groups of mixed ages and cultures. I embrace the fact that WARP reaches out to youth. I hope we can more heartily find ways to learn from and encourage groups who bring different ways of seeing the fiber arts and weaving. I am particularly interested in weaving from the continent of Africa…Janice

 

Meet Mariana Mace…
I have been a loom weaver for almost fifty years and a basket weaver for more than twenty. I enjoy collecting or creating the materials I use, going out in the woods to pull bark from cedar trees and grub in the dirt for spruce root or tules. The weaving that travels through my loom is inspired by my handspun or hand dyed yarns.

Working with my hands connects me to family – to the aunt who taught me to knit, the parents who encouraged me to bead, the daughter who wound skeins and balls of yarn for my weaving, and the granddaughters who learn basketry from me. Handwork also connects me to artisans of other times and other cultures. I’ve loved collecting and then re-gifting world textiles for a very long time. My goal is to respectfully use some traditional ideas, materials and techniques in my own way, in my own work, creating new art from old traditions.

My academic background is in anthropology, textiles, Native American art history and museology. I was a special Education teacher and testing specialist for fifteen years. Then I became involved with the Jensen Arctic Museum at Western Oregon University as a volunteer, board member and finally curator/director for fifteen years until I retired.

I became a WARP member very early on. I remember being totally awestruck at the breadth of experience and commitment that was evident from the first conference I attended. I’ve been a delighted witness to the influx of new and younger members, especially the students. It would be a pleasure to serve on the board…Mariana

 

Connect with Carrie…
Carrie Miller is a textile artist and sculptor currently living in Colorado. Her working process and material curiosity are the products of an untamed childhood that she hopes to pass on to her daughter. Growing up on a farm, Carrie was constantly exposed to new life, death and whatever could be accomplished in between. Her time was split between adventures in horseback riding, backwoods archaeology and whole days hunkered down behind her sewing machine. The rhythm of this lifestyle is the source of Carrie’s enthusiasm for the challenge to find and make tools, learn new techniques and manifest a plan.

Carrie was trained as a seamstress and she pursued design and art simultaneously throughout her undergraduate degree. She has been an art instructor, in a variety of capacities, to students of all ages. Carrie is the current Fibers Graduate Teaching Assistant at Colorado State University and will be graduating with her MFA in May 2018.

Her recent professional projects include assisting with the curation of a historic bridal exhibition at the Avenir Museum of Design and Merchandising and interning with the non-profit organization, Weave a Real Peace. Carrie was the 2017 recipient of the Charlie and Gwen Hattchette Creativity Scholarship and the Handweavers Guild of America’s HGA scholarship. Her work was recently featured on the cover of Shuttle Spindle Dyepot magazine and accepted to Scythia, the 12th Biennial International Textile Exhibition in Ukraine.

My Body at Home, 2017; organza, pigment dye, thread.

My interest in being a board member
Part of my internship with WARP was researching and writing a Young Members Initiative. Through this process, I was able to participate in a strategic planning meeting with the WARP board. I was very inspired by all the behind-the-scenes enthusiasm for the continued health of the organization.

Bandage, 2017, handwoven yarn, rust dye, acid dye.

As a WARP board member I would look forward to being a liaison to other young members. I have several ideas for projects that could build on the Young Members Initiative. One of these ideas is writing a grant to fund a textile education project that young members would lead in their local neighborhoods. The goal would be to provide funding for young professionals to gain experience while they facilitate WARP’s mission of creating connected textile communities. I feel purposeful and comfortable in the WARP community and would be so honored to be a board member of this organization…Carrie

Carrie Miller

 

 

 

 

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