The Textiles and Materiality Cluster at Milieux announces the winners of its recent round of student research grants. The Cluster awarded Individual Research Grants to Amélie Belanger (BFA Fibres and Material Practices), Molly-Claire Gillett (PhD INDI), Kelly Arlene Grant (PhD Humanities), and Cecilia McKinnon (MFA Fibres and Material Practices) and Travel Grants to Anna Eyler (MFA Sculpture) and Etta Sandry (MFA Fibres and Material Practices).
Amélie Belanger received an Individual Research Grant for her ongoing research project: Eternal Remains: Making Art in Pre-apocalyptical Era. Belanger’s current research surrounds the Anthropocene, anthropocentrism, and the ecological crisis. For this project, Belanger proposes to construct sculptures that incorporate borax crystals, delicate structures of threads of copper, incense and soap elements, and bronze casting of cotton, paper, and weaving.
Molly-Claire Gillett received an Individual Research Grant for her PhD project: “Tangled in lace: the changing contexts of Irish lace production, 19th century and now.” The project is a study of 19th-century lace design and production, guided and shaped by a research creation practice in lacemaking and engagement with lacemaking groups. This summer, Gillett will be travelling to Ireland and England to begin her thesis research in a variety of locations, most of which are related to the Irish lace designer Emily Anderson, who was active in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Kelly Arlene Grant received an Individual Research Grant for her PhD project: “A State of Upheaval: Dress and Personal Material Culture in Eighteenth-Century Nova Scotia.” Grant will be undertaking a research trip to Nova Scotia over the next few months to study the extant garments from the last quarter of the eighteenth century in the Nova Scotia Museum collection. Concurrently, she will be looking closely at how living history programs work within the museum family with a critical eye so that recommendations can be made for improvement using the collections themselves as a method of study and reconstruction.
Cecilia McKinnon received an Individual Research Grant for her project: Breakable Places. For this project, McKinnon is researching the history of cast sugar for breakables in cinema and producing her own series of breakable bottles. Through this research, she will connect the specific uses of sugar glass in depictions of violence in cinema to a broader inquiry about the material production of landscape through cultural ideology in North America. The primary goal is to draw connections between landscape representation, histories of colonial violence, and environmental precarity in light of the looming climate crisis, and to do so through material and academic research.
Anna Eyler received a Travel Grant to present her project PAN/PAN at the Currents New Media Festival in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which runs from June 7-23, 2019. Organized by Parallel Studios, Currents New Media is an annual, citywide event, bringing together the work of established and emerging New Media artists, from New Mexico, the US and the World, for events showcasing interactive and non-interactive installations, multimedia performances, VR and AR environments, single channel video, animation, experimental documentary, web based/app art forms, robotics and 3D printing.
Etta Sandry received a Travel Grant to present her project (45.544728, -73.632496) at Fiberart International 2019 in Pitssburgh, Pennsylvania, which runs from May 30 – Aug 24, 2019. Fiberart International 2019 is the 23rd exhibition of contemporary textile art sponsored by the Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh, Inc. The exhibition will feature artworks by 55 artists from the US and abroad, taking place at two Pittsburgh arts organizations: Contemporary Craft and the Brew House Association. Sandry’s work will be exhibited at Contemporary Craft.
textiles + materiality research cluster 