The club Adrienne Callander, a professor in the Department of Art, started as the Fiber Art Club last semester transitions into the student-led Fiber Paper Art Club and becomes an official Mississippi State University student organization Tuesday.
As a new club, the FPA strives to grow and reach students interested in learning about a tactile subset of the fine arts: fiber arts.
The club works with various media encompassed within the label fiber arts. From sweaters and scarfs to letterpress and bookbinding, the club explores sewing, knitting, weaving, quilting, fabric dyeing and papermaking — just to name a few.
The club is open to people of all disciplines, not just art and design students. The organization is nonrestrictive, as it thrives on gaining attendees excited to learn about more nontraditional mediums and desiring to join a community of students equally excited about working together to discover more about fiber arts.
Members will have the opportunity to participate in structured, hands-on art projects they may not have had access to otherwise, such as working with a letterpress or materials to bind books.
Britany Johnson, senior fine arts major with concentration in graphic design, said the FPA requires members to have no prerequisite knowledge or skills, and students of all stripes may attend.
“You don’t have to know how to do fiber art to join at all,” she said. “In fact, I learned to knit and crochet here. We already have boys involved also and would love to have even more.”
Because the FPA is not just for artists, it exists to serve people who enjoy fiber arts but do not get the opportunity to learn and participate in them in their majors.
For Anna Callaway, junior fine arts major with concentrations in graphic design and painting, the FPA functions almost as another class. She said the club has not only helped develop her knowledge and appreciation of art, but has also allowed her to work on meaningful projects not found in her design classes.
“It allows fine arts majors to learn how to make business cards and how to create their own blog or website,” she said. “It enables graphic design students to learn things that they normally wouldn’t take as a class because they don’t have the time to. It also is a great resource on fiber arts, that isn’t offered in the CAAD Department.”
Callaway said the FPA not only includes students and faculty, but brings in artists from the Starkville community to hold workshops on various mediums.
“We have monthly meetings where we talk about upcoming events and what workshops our members want to focus on,” she said. “Our first workshop will be with Suzanna Powney. She will be teaching us bookbinding and how to letterpress the cover of the book.”
The FPA gives students a chance to learn and enjoy new methods and techniques that could apply to their own jobs and majors.
Maura Worch, junior fine arts major with concentration in graphic design, said joining the club has benefited her in many ways. She said she not only works on enjoyable projects, but she learns invaluable new ways of creative thinking and meets artists she would have never run into otherwise.
“The club reaches the community and gives others the opportunity to learn more about art that they wouldn’t have gotten a chance to experience otherwise,” she said. “It has helped me learn about so many different artists and new ideas people have been working on. I have gotten to meet so many talented and wonderful people through the club.”
The Fiber Art Club’s first meeting is Tuesday in 100A Stafford Hall at 6 p.m. More information about the club may be found at msufiberclub.com
