Student Fashion Designs on Display at Hillestad Gallery

March 16, 2015

Lincoln, Neb. — Twenty-four pieces of some of the finest work produced by UNL fashion and textile design students are on display at the Biennial Student Juried Exhibition at the Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery, located in the Department of Textiles Merchandising and Fashion Design in the College of Education and Human Sciences.

The work will be on display in the gallery on the second floor of the Home Economics Building between March 16 and April 10. The Friends of the Hillestad Gallery will host a closing reception for the exhibition from 5 to 7 p.m. April 10 in the gallery, with awards announced at 5:30 p.m. The awards are generously provided by the Mary Mitchell Fashion Excellence Award Fund and the Friends of the Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery, and the public is welcome to attend and meet the designers.

This year's invited juror is Kim Hahn, associate professor and associate director of the prestigious Fashion School of Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. Professor Hahn, an alumna of UNL's textiles merchandising and fashion design department, earned both her master's degree in apparel design and her doctorate in merchandising at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is an internationally recognized designer and scholar sought after for workshops and symposia throughout the country. She has participated in more than 22 juried exhibitions and holds six first-place awards for her designs, many of which were featured at the Hillestad Gallery in a recent show entitled "Optical Meshing." She has shown her work in China and Korea as well as throughout the United States.

Hahn said she was honored and intrigued to carry out the jurying process. She spoke of the work as "multidimensional," having both "meaning and structure." She said she enjoyed viewing examples of embroidery and beadwork, and appreciated the diversity of the work. Of the 24 pieces in the exhibition, the original, sometimes cutting-edge designs range from evening wear to Japanese-inspired wabi sabi fashion. The pieces were developed in classes such as Draping, Flat Pattern, Line Development, Experimental Apparel Design, and Fashion Design in Multimedia. The garments range from statement pieces to highly marketable garments that reflect current trends. The pieces are concept driven and developed from original patterns. They display techniques such as embroidery, beadwork, pleating, weaving and free-form draping. Some garments are hand dyed while others are a showcase for original, digital prints. This is an opportunity to view the design work of students about to start their careers in the global marketplace.

The following is a list by hometown of students who were selected to display their work in the 2015 Biennial Student Juried Exhibition:

IN NEBRASKA
Bee: Kaitlyn Coufal
Elgin: Olivia Borer
Lincoln: Armela Naco, Kilee Richards, Haley Williams
Omaha: Breanne Reiss
Palmyra: Brandy Focken
Tekamah: Brandon Perchal

ELSEWHERE
Glen Lyon, Pa.: Molly McPherson