Kansas City Art Institute

PAULINE VERBEEK-COWART, Professor and chair of the Fiber Department, has been on the faculty of the Kansas City Art Institute since 1997. A native of the Netherlands, she received her BFA (1982) in Fine Art from the Maryland Institute and her MFA in textile design from the University of Kansas (1995). Ms Verbeek-Cowart’s academic and Fine Art careers have garnered her numerous awards including the Kansas City Art Institute’s Distinguished Achievement Award (2014), Excellence in teaching award (2007) and the 2008 Kansas Arts Commission Master Fellowship in Visual Art/Fine Craft. She is one of the leaders in the use of new technologies in hand-weaving and has also conducted research using industrial looms in The Netherlands and the US. Her industrially woven work crosses boundaries between Fine Art and applied textiles and is directed toward structurally textured fabrics for apparel as well as home-furnishings. Her work has been exhibited extensively in both national and international venues including France, Austria, Germany, Japan, Korea and Australia.

Contact: Pcowart@kcai.edu

Kim Eichler-Messmer is an Assistant Professor in Fiber at the Kansas City Art Institute, where she has taught surface design, quilting, and entrepreneurship since 2008. Eichler-Messmer received an MFA in Textiles from the University of Kansas and a BFA in Drawing and Printmaking from Iowa State University. She was an Artist in Residence at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN. Her hand dyed, one of a kind quilts have been exhibited nationally in numerous solo and juried shows and featured on prominent design blogs including Apartment Therapy and Design Sponge. She was commissioned by Pottery Barn Teen to create an exclusive design for their catalog and select stores and her hand dyed quilts were featured in the West Elm Catalog. Eichler-Messmer is the author of “Modern Color: An Illustrated Guide to Dyeing Fabric for Modern Quilts” and her work has been included in “Quilting with a Modern Slant” by Rachel May, “The Essential Guide To Modern Quilt Making” edited by Heather Grant, and “The Uppercase Compendium of Craft and Creativity” by Janine Vangool.

Contact: Keichler-messmer@kcai.edu

Marie Bannerot McInerney is an interdisciplinary studio artist and educator. Her process driven work investigates conceptions of fragility, instability, truth, and experiential knowledge.

She has exhibited across the United States and abroad including shows at the Bellevue Arts Museum in Bellevue, WA, Mildred Lane Kemper Museum in Saint Louis, MO, Corcoran College in Washington, DC, The Schiller Garden House at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany, and The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in Saint Louis, MO. McInerney co-authored an essay in the newly published book, Probing the Skin: Cultural Representations of our Contact Zone and was recently awarded a Cultural Exchange Grant from the U.S. Embassy in Berlin to travel and present work. She co-founded The Independent Art Market, an artist collaborative in Saint Louis, MO and worked in the costume and fashion industry for over a decade as a designer and manufacturer of knitwear for SKIF International and as the head dyer/painter at Opera Theatre Saint Louis.

McInerney’s formative years were spent in Houston, TX before she earned her BFA at the Kansas City Art Institute and her MFA at Washington University in Saint Louis as a Danforth Scholar. She is one of six artists that make up the curatorial collaboration, PLUG Projects, she is Vice President of Annual Meetings for the Friends of Dard Hunter, a contemporary hand papermaking organization, and serves as Assistant Professor in the Fiber Department at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Contact: Mmcinerney@kcai.edu

Maria Behnen has 35+ years of experience designing ready-to-wear and accessories. She is a graduate from Washington University with a BFA in fashion design. She has worked in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City for brands including Esprit, Hype, IB Diffusion, Nanette Lepore & Gwen Stefani. Since arriving to Kansas City in 2011 she has created runway collections for Kansas City Fashion week and is launching her own label Spring 2017. She has enjoyed instructing fashion students locally since 2013.

Contact: Mbehnen@kcai.edu