FIBER ARTS ZONE

The master folk artist Suzanne Hokanson has been weaving for over 40 year. Over the years, Suzanne has taught herself by experimenting with different weave structures while she has also had the help of taking workshops with well-known professional weavers such as Dini Moes, Virginia West, Daryl Lancaster, Kathryn Weber, among others. Suzanne has a broad knowledge of weaving and other fiber art techniques such as knitting, crocheting, and felting. Suzanne has created not only garments, but sculptural pieces such as the handwoven live oak tree she created for the Jepson Art Museum store’s window and the banners which she calls Totems that she created for an artist in residency at Sulfur Studios in Savannah, Georgia.

Suzanne has extensive experience teaching and exhibiting her work. She was a public and private school art teacher for over 20 years in the Plattsburgh and Albany area schools teaching pre-kindergarten through high school art. She has also taught several beginning weaving techniques on a variety of looms in Savannah, North Carolina and New York. As part of a cooperative gallery, Gallery 209 in Savannah, Suzanne sold her handwoven clothing and accessories for over 5 years. Since moving back to Plattsburgh, NY in the Fall of 2022 Suzanne has taught 2 beginning weaving workshops at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts, a potholder loom workshop at the Strand Center for the Arts. Suzanne and Patricia, her potential apprentice, met when Suzanne helped with the creation of Patricia’s Community Threads project. Since the Fall Suzanne has exhibited at several area venues including 2 juried exhibits at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts, 2 exhibits at the Strand’s gallery in Plattsburgh (a member’s show and the Community Threads exhibit), as well as 3 juried exhibits at the Sparrow Art Gallery in Middlebury, Vermont. Suzanne is currently exhibiting at the Adirondack Art Gallery in Essex, New York. In the past Suzanne has served as an officer in several organizations, including as president of the Hudson Mohawk Handweavers Guild in Albany, NY, as well as the Fiber Guild of the Savannahs.

Suzanne has a profound interest in the weaving traditions in other cultures and throughout history. After receiving a Fulbright Memorial Fund Scholarship Suzanne spent 3 weeks in Japan studying the culture. She not only explored hand-weaving in Japan but developed several programs for her students including teleconferencing with Japanese students and creating several cooperative exhibits of artwork created by both her students and those in a Japanese middle school which were exhibited in both Tokyo and Albany, NY. An interest in the weavers of the German Bauhaus developed into her Masters thesis and resulted in the book she published, Woven: a Bauhaus Memoir.

The apprentice is fiber artist Patricia Downs. Patricia Downs attended the Fashion Institute of Technology and earned a Bachelor’s degree in the Fine Arts program in 2019. Since graduating and moving back to her hometown, Plattsburgh, NY, Patricia has been building a substantial body of work. She uses repurposed materials, primarily fibers, to create wall-hanging and free-standing sculptures. In her work she uses craft techniques, such as weaving, crocheting, knotting, embroidery, and sewing, in innovative and unique ways. Through making sculptural forms, she honors the traditions of typically “domestic” and “feminine” craft processes while elevating them to the level of fine art.

Patricia Downs is an accomplished fiber artist. Though she is a self-taught fiber artist - not having learned the specific techniques she uses from her degree program - using homemade lap looms and wire armatures to weave upon, Patricia would benefit from learning traditional weaving techniques. If taught to use a loom by a master weaver, such as Suzy Hokanson, Patricia would be able to apply these skills to her practice in new and exciting ways. This collaboration would fuel both artists’ practices, but truly benefit Patricia, the apprentice, as her current “studio” situation (working out her small, one bedroom apartment) does not allow the space or resources needed for learning to use a real loom - learning a technique and to use equipment that she has dreamt of using in her work for so long.

Suzy and Patricia first met while preparing for an exhibition at the Strand Center for the Arts, in which they both were showing, titled Community Threads. Alongside the exhibition in the gallery, Patricia spearheaded a collaborative, community, public art project. She guided community members through helping her to create fiber-covered panels of chicken wire that were attached to the fenceline outside the Strand Center for the Arts. She collected repurposed fibers from the community through a donation drive, so anyone who wanted to be included in the project could donate material to be used in its creation. She held work-days at the gallery, where the public was invited to participate in weaving, knotting, crocheting (etc.) strips of donated fiber materials onto the chicken wire panels. Patricia would teach her techniques for covering the chicken wire armature and then let participants run with it, creating in whatever way made sense to them. Suzy participated in many work days, had a major hand in helping with the project, and got to know Patricia over sessions of working with fibers - both in their elements.