Fiber Fellowship
The Fiber Fellowship is a collaboration between Arts & Crafts and the Art Department that supports a Visiting Artist to join CC each semester. This Fellowship continues the long history of Fiber education within the Arts and Crafts program and at Colorado College. In 2023 a newly renovated fibers studio was completed and offers opportunities for students and staff across the College to learn about the history and contemporary practices within the field. This program will introduce students to contemporary artists working in the field and provide a unique opportunity to build a wide range of fiber knowledge based on the interests and work of individual artists.
During their time on campus the Visiting Artists will be in residence and create new work, which will be exhibited and shared at the culmination of the program. In addition, they will teach a block class in fibers, and design co-curricular workshops for Arts and Crafts. This unique partnership intends to build deep connections with the artists and CC community and connect them to the many resources available.
Each year we will host two visiting artists (Fall/Spring), and applications for the upcoming academic year will be available each Spring. You can find the Fellowship position posting here.
Fiber Fellowship Artists
Naomi Falk, Fall 2024 Visiting Artist
Naomi grew up in the wilds of Michigan and, from an early age, planned to be an archaeologist, a brain surgeon, a heart surgeon, a meteorologist, and travel the world with Jacques Cousteau (He was an underwater explorer and conservationist and made films for tv about his adventures). Those didn’t work out, but she did study sculpture and ceramics at Michigan State and Portland State Universities and receive an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University. Falk’s work considers grief, loss, and communal and environmental survival. How might foraged materials be gathered and reframed to build objects and experiences that comfort, support, challenge, and sustain us? Falk has exhibited at well-respected regional and national venues and done residencies in Iceland, Vermont, the Faroe Islands, and most recently, at Hambidge Center and The Residency Project. An Associate Professor of Studio Art in Sculpture at the University of South Carolina, she is Co-Creator of www.WhatDoWeDoNow.art and a new local art collective, Blue Acorn Art Lab.
José Santiago Pérez, Spring 2024 Visiting Artist
José Santiago Pérez is an artist and educator based in Chicago who weaves containers of time, vessels of transformation, speculative portals, and spaces of belonging. José is a 2022 Resident Fellow at the Lunder Institute for American Art at the Colby College Art Museum, and a 2019-2020 HATCH resident at Chicago Artists Coalition. His work has been supported by an Illinois Arts Council Agency grant, a DCASE Individual Artist Program grant from the City of Chicago, and a Chicago Artists Coalition SPARK grant. Recent solo exhibitions include Portalisms at Boundary in Chicago and Shimmerings of the Not Yet (T)Here at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids. José has presented craft and performance based work in group exhibitions in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, South Bend, Philadelphia, Boston, and Rockland, Maine. Features and reviews of his work have appeared in Artforum, Basketry+ Magazine, Sixty Inches from Center, Newcity Art, Art Intercepts, and the Archives + Futures Podcast. He holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he teaches in the Fiber and Material Studies department
John Fifield-Perez, Fall 2023 Visiting Artist
John Fifield-Perez is a textile artist and educator with a material-based conceptual practice. His work centers themes of queerness, intimacy, and the romantic ideal through the formal language of abstraction. He has spent the past seven years teaching at Kent State University, the University of Missouri—Columbia, and The University of Iowa in his capacities as a Special Collections librarian and as a graduate student.
John has recently been recognized for his artistic achievements through the Surface Design Association, American Tapestry Alliance, and the Ohio Craft Museum. He holds an M.F.A. in Studio Arts from Kent State University, an M.A. in Library and Information Science with a certificate in Book Arts from The University of Iowa, and a B.M. in French horn performance from Oklahoma State University.