Inside a bright West Michigan studio with an impressive yarn wall and an even more impressive collection of production knitting machines, designer Liz Hilton creates 3D knit products for clients and invents more machine knitted products of her own.
Welcome to KNITit, the studio Hilton founded in 2015 on South Division Avenue in Grand Rapids, Michigan to meet a need for customized 3D knit innovation without the production commitment.
As the mother of an adult child with autism, Beryl Bartkus wanted to create meaningful work for her daughter, Erin, and others with developmental disabilities.
Fast forward a little more than two years and Beryl is leading an established team of about a dozen working artists at Ability Weavers, the weaving studio and shop she and her husband, Eric, started in downtown Lowell, Michigan.
On this episode of the podcast I geek out about wood type and paper and ink with letterpress printmaker Amos Kennedy, owner and chief printer at Kennedy Prints in Detroit.
At Natural Cycles Farm in southern Allegan County, Lori Evesque is raising fresh food, fiber and plants to sell at local farmers markets and share with students in her yarn dyeing workshops. With a background in chemistry and an interest in growing plants to use in natural dyeing experiments, her natural dyeing projects grew more intense when she started demonstrating these techniques at Viking re-enactment events.
German designer Martin Schneider created this 3-D printed printing press and published his design online for printmakers around the globe to print and enjoy.
The printmaking world includes many kind and generous artists, and Martin Schneider is one of them. After the 22-year-old art student in Cologne, Germany designed a 3-D printed printing press for a class at his university, he decided to share his design files for free and allow printmakers around the globe to download and print a press of their own as part of his fantastic Open Press Project.
Mark Newport photo by Jeff Cancelosi
Get ready, folks, because this podcast episode is an extremely fun one featuring Mark Newport, the Artist-in-Residence and Head of Fiber at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan.
From hand embroidered comic book covers to his knitted superhero costumes, Newport’s hand-stitched, embellished and knitted works have inspired fiber enthusiasts for years.