Kathleen Knippel
Textile Artist
I see each student as a budding artist and hope to shape and develop their creative instincts, giving them new tools and perspectives to explore along their journey. Students need to acquire appropriate techniques and skills in the artistic medium, so these tools can be explored, manipulated and combined with other forms to develop individual creative expression. I want to give students an additional multimedia tool in the exciting silk-screening course with its many contemporary applications and mixed media possibilities to use in their artistic expression. I find it particularly exciting to work with young people who come to study abroad in Italy, full of enthusiasm and promise. It constantly renews my first impressions of when I came to Italy. –Kathy Knippel
Laboratories tutoring:
Silk-screening | Batik | Shibori | Textile design | Other Printing Techniques – 2 Day Workshop | The origin of fibre colouring, ancient methods | Artist book
Bio:
Kathleen Knippel, MA, California State University, Los Angeles. For over 26 years, she has been a professor of art at the University of Florence and has organized university programs for foreign students. Together with Tamio Fujimura, she founded the international faculty of specialized artists, artisans and professionals, completing the course program at Fuji Art Studio.
A textile expert, Kathy Knippel was commissioned by Volkswagen in the 1970s to create a large-scale soft sculpture of a Volkswagen “Beetle”, now in the permanent collection of the Volkswagen Museum in Englewood, New Jersey.
She also taught at Rio Hondo College in Los Angeles.
She has also produced costumes for various theatre productions, including Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which was performed at the Bargello Museum in Florence in 2009. Her work has been featured in many books and publications on textiles. She has exhibited frequently in Italy and the United States.