Fiber Class « fibertext: education, practice & theory

Fiber Class

December 3, 2006 at 11:59 am | In education | 1 Comment

I am putting together projects for my first fiber art class, and looking for suggestions on what to include. Any ideas would be much appreciated. Thanks.

This is my first time teaching fiber arts at the college level, and most of the students have never even heard of fiber arts, much less have any experience in the subject matter. It is a special topics class in the art dept, so I can do whatever I want with it.

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When I think back to my first fibers course, the thing that really got me interested was the combination of historic renaissance textiles and contemporary work involving textiles. I studied under Tom Lundberg, and I later discovered just how much he loved French and Italian textiles (especially ecclesastical garments). There were some “World Textiles” intermingled, but it took me a few years to really appreciate them. I think that the downfall of many fibers professors is that they focus too much on what they think textiles “should be”, and what students “should” appreciate. My advise is to focus on your own passion for a while, ’cause chances are, if you’re excited about what you’re teaching, students will be excited about learning it. If they’ve never heard of fibers before, they’ll probably be bored. Make it exciting! Make it diverse! But don’tt limit it to the contemporary… a lot of that stuff is BS, and your students will see right through it.

Comment by susie — December 6, 2006 #