Loriene Pearson and Daphne Lee didn’t set out to be artists. Their respective careers each had artistic elements to them; Pearson held a corporate job for 35 years and dabbled in photography on the side, while Lee had a long-running career as an architect. But each of them fell into a new career in the arts by happenstance. Their first steps into making their crafts into careers were boosted by a common participation in the Emerging Artists Cohort Program, hosted by the American Craft Council based in Northeast Minneapolis.
The Emerging Artists Cohort Program ran for the first time in July 2021, and ran for 12 weeks. Thirteen artists were given a grant to fund their participation in the program, which would teach them skills to help them approach art as entrepreneurs. An “emerging artist,” in the context of this program, doesn’t necessarily mean a new artist. Emerging refers to the amount of reach and visibility an artist has within the industry. The idea is to give artists a better foothold and skill set to launch a career in their craft. The program consists of an intensive regimen of learning sessions, one-on-ones, and a final workshop setting up goals for the next year and meetings with prospective show and gallery curators. Cohorts can apply from anywhere in the nation. Participants last year hailed from as far as Los Angeles and New York. Pearson and Lee were the only ones from Minnesota.
Pearson and Lee applied to be in the Cohort Program hoping to advance their budding new careers. Pearson did embroidery, Lee did paper craft, and each of them left behind longtime jobs for a new-to-them craft.
“I was brand spankin’ new, thinking, ‘What the heck am I doing?’” said Pearson. “My embroidery is based on Winnebago women’s appliqué patterns. There is no such thing as traditional Winnebago embroidery. This is a new way of visioning the women’s patterns that I am doing through embroidery.”
Pearson is a member of the Winnebago tribe of Nebraska. She dabbled in photography at powwows, documenting her people’s traditions. Traditional Winnebago applique work displayed at the events inspired her to try her hand at it herself. Her first showing was at South Minneapolis’ All my Relations Gallery, where her embroidery was a part of an exhibit for missing indigenous women. After her first exhibition was a success, a friend recommended she apply to the Craft Council’s program last spring.
“It gave me a lot of confidence,” Pearson said. “The people who participated in the cohort, man they’re so cool … everyone offered up something. It was food for my brain, food for my soul, food for my spirit.”
Pearson said while she was older than a lot of the other participants, she felt at home amongst them. The sheer variety of crafts each of the cohorts produced, and the lessons taught by the program’s directors, inspired her to push the boundaries of her own work. She never missed a session, though most of them were remote due to COVID-19 safety protocols. The classes, she said, helped her set aggressive goals for her business, and gave her a better scope of how to market herself to exhibits around the country.
Mere months after the cohort program was over, Pearson has a solo exhibit lined up at the Journey Museum in Rapid City, South Dakota. The grand opening will be on May 21, and it will run until Aug 21. She was also invited to the American Craft Made Exhibition in October, and was recently given the “best emerging artist” award by the Native People of the Plains arts and crafts board. She said that she cannot stress enough how much the Craft Council helped her launch her career as an artist.
Daphne Lee also credited the Craft Council with helping her jump-start her career change from architecture to craft. Originally from New York, Lee came to Minneapolis in 2015 and worked freelance for a few years. She dabbled in paper crafts, making paper flowers as gifts for family and friends and posting photos of her work to Instagram. Surprisingly to her, her flowers began gaining a lot of traction online, especially after an art blog called Design Milk reposted some of her pieces. Suddenly, she was getting requests for commissions on a craft she only ever considered a pastime.
“I thought it would just be a hobby, you know?” she said, admitting that when she applied to the cohort program, she didn’t
really consider herself an emerging artist.
The idea of calling herself an artist still feels weird; she didn’t attend art school, and until living in the vibrant art scene of Minneapolis (she has moved to Virginia since completing the cohort program), she had never really been a part of an artistic community.
“I wish they [the Craft Council] had started this kind of program back when I was first starting out,” Lee said. The Cohort program helped give Lee the sense of community she had been missing while picking up her new craft, and helped her apply it in ways she hadn’t considered. She already had all the tools and knowhow she needed to make her paper flowers, but marketing, branding, and elevating a hobby into a business were all skills the program and the other participating artists participating helped her achieve.
On May 4, applications are opening for the second year of the Emerging Artists Cohort Program. This year, the Craft Council received a grant of $556,500 from the Windgate Foundation to help support the program. To apply, artists are encouraged to write a bio about themselves and their craft, and prepare ten samples and an artist’s statement for submission. Ten will be selected, and each will receive a grant of $10,000 to fund their work while in the program. Interested parties can sign up for details on the application process online at craftcouncil.org/programs/emerging-artists-cohort
Below: The American Craft Council Cohort gave two local artists a boost. Daphne Lee, first, and her cut paper flowers. Loriene Pearson, next, and her modern take on traditional Winnebago designs.
(Provided photos)