Dayton’s Holiday Figurines
Hennepin Theatre Trust, Minnesota’s nationally recognized performing arts center in Hennepin Theatre District, holds 34 of the vintage figurines that once graced the annual Holiday Show events on the eighth floor of Dayton’s in downtown Minneapolis. The set of 34 figurines, some of which are decades old and have not been on view since the 1980s, need significant repair to return to their full splendor, including animation. This year’s display of five near fully refurbished figurines kicks off a fundraising effort to renovate and repair all 34 figurines belonging to Hennepin Theatre Trust.
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The Quilts of Gee's Bend
Highlighting Three Generations of Work by Qunnie Pettway, Lorraine Pettway, Andrea Pettway Williams and Travis Pettway
The Quilts of Gee's Bend were created by a group of women who live in the isolated African-American hamlet of Gee's Bend, Alabama. Their brilliant, improvisational range of approaches to composition are more often associated with the inventiveness and power of the leading 20th-century American abstract painters than traditional Euro-American quilt-making. These residents of Gee’s Bend, are direct descendants of the enslaved people who worked the cotton plantation established in 1816 by Joseph Gee. After the Civil War, their ancestors remained on the plantation working as sharecroppers. In the 1930s the price of cotton fell and the community faced ruin. As part of its Depression-era intervention, the Federal Government purchased ten thousand acres of the former plantation and provided loans enabling residents to acquire and farm the land formerly worked by their ancestors. Unlike the residents of other tenant com­munities, who could be forced by economic circumstances to move—or who were sometimes evicted in retaliation for their efforts to achieve civil rights—the people of the Bend could retain their land and homes. Cultural tradi­tions like quiltmaking were nourished by these continuities.

Linda Keene
Linda Keene is a self-taught fiber artist based originally from Minnesota and now resides in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her artwork reflects images of African-American life and culture using colorful textiles as a medium. Each one-of-a-kind fabric collage is created using a combination of hand and machine quilting, as well as embellishments that enhance the overall image. Her goal as an artist is to reflect the values of family, friendship and community that have shaped her world view.

Diane Semanko
Diane Semanko started quilting in 1998 in the Pacific Northwest. Diane enjoys creating the traditional patterns like the Single Irish Chain, Log Cabin, and Scrap Quilts along with Modern Quilt Patterns. She likes space and doesn't feel the need to color to the very edge. Simple is Best in Diane’s book.