Land Acknowledgement

The Kansas City Art Institute acknowledges that the campus is built on the ancestral territory of the Kiikaapoi, Osage, Kaw, and Očeti Šakówiŋ, the original caretakers of the land we are standing on today. Oto and Kansa are the two native languages of this land.

We respectfully acknowledge the many peoples who have stewarded these lands — the lands we may know as Missouri and Kansas — throughout the generations. These stewards include the Kansa, Osage, Otos, Missouri, Shawnee, Chickasaw, Illini, Ioway, the Očeti Šakówiŋ, Quapaw, Pottawatomie, Hopewell, and Mississippi Peoples. 

 We acknowledge the many peoples who have passed through or relocated near these lands. This includes the Wyandot, Cherokee, Delaware, Kickapoo, the Sac and Fox, Shawnee and Potawatomie. We acknowledge that the land on which we gather at KCAI is land known as Cession Tract #123, ceded by the Great and Little Osage People in 1825. 

 Before the Indian Removal Act in 1830, there were seven recognized tribes in Missouri: Chickasaw, Illini, Ioway, Otoe, Missouria, Osage, and Quapaw tribes.

 KCAI commits to recognize and strives to advocate for the more than 98 Indigenous American tribes represented in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

About KCAI FIBER

Fiber as a medium crosses boundaries and interfaces with art, design, craft and technology. Inherently multidisciplinary, the field of fiber encompasses, among others, painting, printing, dyeing, pattern design, sewing, quilting, garment construction for fashion and costume, weaving, knitting, crochet, basketry techniques, felting, spinning and paper-making.

The curriculum emphasizes skill development and the generation of ideas through a materials-based process of making. You’ll learn processes of traditional fiber art combined with the use of new digital tools. The need for a tactile experience in response to the digital environment is the most exciting development in our field. Fiber is more relevant and diverse now than ever before.

Our curriculum covers a broad range of traditional and experimental practices in a variety of textile-related areas that are unique within the U.S. Our students immerse themselves in the vocabulary and language of fiber from their sophomore to senior years. During their senior year, students choose a concentration and develop a body of work that culminates their studies and will be exhibited in a senior thesis show.

Faculty and Staff

Pauline Verbeek-Cowart, Professor and Chair

Professor and chair of the Fiber Department, Pauline Verbeek-Cowart, has been on the faculty of the Kansas City Art Institute since 1997. A native of the Netherlands, she received her BFA (1982) in Fine Art from the Maryland Institute and her MFA in textile design from the University of Kansas (1995). Ms Verbeek-Cowart’s academic and Fine Art careers have garnered her numerous awards including the Kansas City Art Institute’s Distinguished Achievement Award (2014), Excellence in teaching award (2007) and the 2008 Kansas Arts Commission Master Fellowship in Visual Art/Fine Craft. She is one of the leaders in the use of new technologies in hand-weaving and has also conducted research using industrial looms in The Netherlands and the US. Her industrially woven work crosses boundaries between Fine Art and applied textiles and is directed toward structurally textured fabrics for apparel as well as home-furnishings. Her work has been exhibited extensively in both national and international venues including France, Austria, Germany, Japan, Korea and Australia.

Contact: pcowart@kcai.edu

Kim Eichler-Messmer, Associate Professor

Associate Professor Kim Eichler-Messmer has taught surface design, quilting, and entrepreneurship at KCAI since 2008. Eichler-Messmer received an MFA in Textiles from the University of Kansas and a BFA in Drawing and Printmaking from Iowa State University. She was an Artist in Residence at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN. Her hand dyed, one of a kind quilts have been exhibited nationally in numerous solo and juried shows and featured on prominent design blogs including Apartment Therapy and Design Sponge. She was commissioned by Pottery Barn Teen to create an exclusive design for their catalog and select stores and her hand dyed quilts were featured in the West Elm Catalog. Eichler-Messmer is the author of “Modern Color: An Illustrated Guide to Dyeing Fabric for Modern Quilts” and her work has been included in “Quilting with a Modern Slant” by Rachel May, “The Essential Guide To Modern Quilt Making” edited by Heather Grant, and “The Uppercase Compendium of Craft and Creativity” by Janine Vangool.

Contact: keichler-messmer@kcai.edu

Marie Bannerot McInerney, Assistant Professor

Marie Bannerot McInerney is a multidisciplinary studio artist, curator, and educator. Her site-responsive installations and discrete works in concrete, silk, and canvas consider human agency within the framework of ecological systems, mystical thinking, and natural phenomena. She is a 2018 Charlotte Street Artist Award Fellow and has exhibited across the United States and abroad including shows at the Bellevue Arts Museum (Bellevue, WA), Mildred Lane Kemper Museum (Saint Louis, MO) Friedrich Schiller University (Jena, Germany), and Han Tianheng Art Museum Shanghai (Shanghai City, China). McInerney co-authored an essay in the book, Probing the Skin: Cultural Representations of our Contact Zone and was awarded a Cultural Exchange Grant from the U.S. Embassy in Berlin to present work. Her formative years were spent in Houston, TX before she earned a BFA at the Kansas City Art Institute and a MFA at Washington University in Saint Louis. 

McInerney believes there is great power in collaboration and has served as co-director and co-curator in two curatorial collaboratives: PLUG Projects (Kansas City, MO) and The Independent Art Market (Saint Louis, MO). She worked in the costume and fashion industry for over a decade as a knitwear designer/manufacturer for SKIF International and as the head dyer/painter for the costume shop at the Opera Theatre Saint Louis. She currently sits on the advisory board for North American Hand Papermakers, is a resident artist at Studios Inc, and serves as Assistant Professor in the Fiber Department at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Contact: mmcinerney@kcai.edu

Hadley Clark, Lecturer

Hadley Clark moves fluidly between fine art and garment design, having earned her BFA in Painting from The University of Kansas in 2001 and a second BFA in Fashion Design with Honors from The New School | Parsons Paris in 2010. Her studio output—formerly a fashion line structured around the traditional seasonal model and sold out of her eponymous boutique in Kansas City and a handful of stores nationally—has evolved into a series of holistic creative practices including curating, collaborating with other brands regionally and nationally, commercial production, environmentally-driven design, the development of concept-driven sewing workshops, and lecturing at the University of Kansas and the Kansas City Art Institute.

Clark’s work has been featured with the Hammer Museum Restore (Los Angeles, CA), Cumulus International Design Conference (Paris, France), the Gothenburg Fashion Fair (Gothenburg, Sweden), and Milk and Honey (Taipei Thailand), and she has worked for Tillman Lauterbach, Diane von Furstenberg, Lee Jeans, Ugg, and Ghada Amer.

Contact: hclark@kcai.edu

Emily Chase, Fiber Technician and Studio Coordinator

Emily Chase is a fiber artist and sculptor based in Kansas City, Missouri. In 2023, Chase took on the role of Technician and Studio Coordinator in the Fiber Department at the Kansas City Art Institute. Using paper, silk, and cotton as sculptural media, Chase combines practices including quilting, hand-dyeing, garment construction, and illumination to investigate grief, loss, and the growth and decay of memory. She earned her BFA in Painting from the University of Arkansas in 2013 and the MFA in Fiber from Indiana University in 2023. She is a 2013 recipient of the Windgate-Lamar Fellowship and her work has been shown in exhibitions nationally, including at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Ledger building in Bentonville, AR. From 2017-2019 she was a Fellow in the Tulsa Artist Fellowship.

Contact: echase@kcai.edu