(Radio Iowa) – A community project to temporarily cover the Sioux City Art Center with bright, colorful fabric is about to get underway. New York-based artist Amanda Browder will spearhead the major installation that will ramp up during the festival known as Artsplash in September, and it will be revealed at Artsplash in 2024.”I call myself a large-scale fabric installation artist,” she says. “I’ve studied art, I’ve taught at the Art Institute of Chicago. I’ve been living in Brooklyn for the last 16 years as a full-time artist and this is what I do, I cover buildings in textile.” Browder’s project will be a huge undertaking that will involve gathering the fabric, then having community sewing days to create the massive cloth art installation that will cover the art center.

“We’re doing a call saying, ‘Hey, we’re looking for textile fabric that people are interested in donating to the project,'” Browder says. They need, “saturated color patterns, solid colors, non-stretchy and sadly, no clothing, so that we can build this large-scale fabric piece together and put it on the building.” Browder hopes to have a lot of community input for the public sewing days events. “What public sewing days are is, I host a session where I bring all the sewing machines, I bring all the textile that’s been donated, and we stitch pieces together,” Browder says. “No experience necessary. Anybody can just come. You don’t even have to sew, you can just come and see what we’re doing.” At the end, Browder wants people to be able to stand back, point to the colorful creation and say, “I made that!” Browder will return to Sioux City for this year’s Artsplash and hopes to meet and recruit many locals for the project.

“I can see us making something big together,” she says. “The fabric, if I see this building, of course, I want to cover the whole thing, but usually it’s based on time and location. Also, I just want people to be able to walk past the building and see something different.” The finished work will cover the art center’s atrium, glass hallway, brick, and a portion of the Gilchrist Learning Center. It will remain on the building for about two months and will create a stained glass, kaleidoscope effect within the art center. Anyone interested in sewing or donating fabric may contact the Sioux City Art Center or contact the artist online at http://amandabrowder.com/