I’m Allison Ellingson, a Chicagoan who's left home for Minnesota twice. First for undergraduate studies, earning a Bachelor of Arts from St. Olaf College and then twenty years later, to settle with my husband and three young children in Saint Peter, a small town an hour south of the Twin Cities, close to our friends, family and nature.

 

In the interim, I received a Master of Divinity from McCormick Theological Seminary, a liberal seminary on the southside of Chicago, and worked in immigrant and labor rights. In the evenings during those years, I took every textile class Chicago’s rich community art centers offer, building on my inherited interest in sewing, quilting and surface design.

 

Studying with the Fiber and Material Studies department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA, 2015) was an opportunity for me to explore how social justice and fabric relate, a question I continue to reflect on in my own life and practice.