2020 Seniors
We congratulate an incredible group of hard working and thoughtful young artists and thinkers. Our world is in need of compassionate, creative, problem solvers and we are so pleased that these unique individuals will be lending their talents to this new world we find ourselves in.
Vanessa Yaremy Argueta is a Latinx artist originally from Miami, FL and based in Kansas City, MO. Her work explores translation, transformation, and personal memories through the reverence of shapes and colors found in Mola textiles made by the Kuna women of Guna Yala, Panama. The mola is a product of acculturation, the balancing of two cultures while assimilating to the prevailing culture of the society, and continues to exist because of the Kuna peoples tribal tradition. She deconstructs and reassembles found fabrics into new compositions through digital manipulation and digital printing as well as analogue processes such as sewing, beading and quilting.
Erin Barchet is an artist from Columbia, Missouri. They are currently a senior at the Kansas City Art Institute, working towards their BFA in the Fiber department. With the goal of sustainability in mind, Barchet uses repurposed materials with traditional craft techniques such as quilting, dyeing, and hand stitching. Barchet has exhibited work in Columbia Missouri, Kansas City, and St. Louis. After graduation, Erin plans to continue their artistic practice in the Kansas City area.
Morgan Elliott is a Kansas City-based artist with a focus on floral illustrations and watercolor painting on a variety of substrates. She is a 2020 BFA candidate at the Kansas City Art Institute. The most influential people in her life are her sister, mother, both grandmothers and father. Morgan has lived in five states and two countries, including the United States and Germany. Her travels with her family around Europe and the United States influences her use of nature, as change of scenery was a constant in her life. After quite a few hardships she endured, she found that plants, specifically flowers, allowed for some form of healing and self discovery. These realizations have brought her to make her own tarot deck called Compassio Flora. Morgan lives with many plants in a small apartment outside of Kansas City, alongside her cat, Camille, and partner, Matt.
Amelia Greteman is an artist with a studio practice centered around craft and design who is pursuing her BFA at the Kansas City Art Institute. With a background in Fiber and Printmaking techniques, she is interested in the connections between two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects. She uses quilting as a way to explore color and geometric patterns, while also using felting and woodworking to create experimental furniture pieces. Her interest in sculpture, the body, and the interaction between the two are manifested through her furniture. By using repeated shapes and forms, Amelia has created a common visual language identifiable in all of her work. After graduating, Amelia will continue her exploration in the graduate furniture design program at Rhode Island School of Design.
Lueking Knabe is a mock-historian, amateur queer theorist and sensual quilt-maker crafting work that documents the queer experience through collaging histories, materials, and design aesthetics that reference the queer domestic space as one that is politically charged. Their process begins with a rigorous research into the history of oppression and queer community building that is then superimposed by Knabe’s own personal experiences. References to drugs, sex, the domestic, and sensuality drive their work towards a cold visual aesthetic that references a queer phenomenology gesturing with a limp wrist at the slightly askewed and undeniably otherness of unreckognizable surreal spaces.
Lily Mueller is a multidisciplinary artist based in Kansas City, Missouri. Mueller explores the processes of quilting, sculpture, installation and set design while integrating them with concepts of psychedelic culture, music and personal nostalgia. Much of her inspiration comes from listening to music while working and her childhood. She has been largely influenced by her father’s career as an architect, his interest in psychedelic music and culture, and her mother’s love of textiles and Costa Rican heritage. Mueller is currently pursuing her BFA in Fiber at the Kansas City Art Institute.
Harper Newell was born in Omaha, NE where she was enveloped in a thriving underground scene of artists and musicians that inspired her. Her work plays with color interactions and technical processes such as textile design to create vibrant, woven wall hangings. While at KCAI, Newell received the Susan Lordi Marker Award of Excellence in Fiber, was nominated to present to the Handweaver’s Guild of America, and was chosen to create the 2020 Commencement Sash for KCAI. Newell had selected pieces in the Surface Design Association’s Future Tense exhibition, was in several exhibitions at The Warehouse Gallery, and organized the exhibition Don’t Get it Twisted which took place at Milk Run in 2016 in Omaha, NE.
Paulina Otero is an interdisciplinary Mexican artist who challenges us to rethink the functionality of design that is expressed in the objects we use on our daily basis. Her work creates an ongoing conversation between wearables, furniture design and textiles throughout the use of different craft processes. Inspired by the colors, the patterns and the architecture from her home country, Otero seeks to make a body of work that represents the feeling of nostalgia. Her main goal is to provide a holistic and playful experience that reflects how she has made herself feel at home by creating familiar objects.
Jonah Rose is an intuitive and responsive maker. She takes what is gifted or found and responds by manipulating the surfaces and pushing forms to wearables. Using a wide range of processes (sewing, accessory design, knitting, installation, and laser cutting) she elevates the discarded, neglected and overlooked. She explores what it means to be a Filipina-American woman by exploring identity and displacement. Her accessories both adorn and protect the body - creating a balance between utility and empowerment.
Penelope Stopper is a fiber artist originally from Austin, TX and is currently based in Kansas City, MO. Her work consists of hand dyed improvisational patchwork, with geometric designs that are reminiscent of buildings, windows, and doorways. She is influenced by the traditional Korean sewing technique called Bojagi, which is known for its bold seams and stained glass appearance. Penelope explores interactions between architecture and nature through her geometric compositions in contrast with the delicate nature of the materials she uses. Her work also serves to excite and stimulate the viewer through bold, vibrating colors and abstract designs.
Hannah Lee Sun is a South Korean-American artist currently pursuing her BFA in Fiber at the Kansas City Art Institute. Her work questions the relationship between hard structural forms with soft tactile fiber. This is through welding large bone-like frames that are then patterned and covered with skin-like knit structures. Interaction plays a large role in her work, as her forms are intended to direct body movement. Sun was recently a part of the Surface Design Association’s Future Tense show in Edwardsville, Illinois, as well as Studio Appaix’s show Texture, in New Orleans, Louisiana.