Nancy Gipple

At the beautiful 3-story studio she shares with her sculptor husband Kinji Akagawa in wooded Afton, MN, Nancy creates sculptural quilted work, often employing repurposed materials. “In a time of disposable and throw away culture, with its wastefulness, carelessness and alienation,” she states, “I find myself working in the refuge of the quilt, with its tradition of caring and frugality, to reuse, recycle, remember, re-examine and reconnect.”

The artist earned a BS in Art Education from the University of Wisconsin, River Falls in 1975. In 1985 she was a member of the Selection Panel for First Annual Minnesota Governor’s Award for Contemporary Craft (the recipient: potter Warren MacKenzie) and received an Arts Midwest/Regional NEA Fellowship in Contemporary Craft. Committed to community, Nancy has served for over a decade as an election judge and was a literacy tutor to both children and adults. She participates in craft-related volunteer projects including Stitch of Time: Intergenerational Story Cloths, a collaboration between the Walker Art Center and the YWCA of Minneapolis.

Nancy has taken part in exhibitions at Tokyo and Osaka, Japan; the Musee-Chateau d’Annecy, France; California State University in Los Angeles; North Carolina State University, Raleigh; and was included in the Quilt National Retrospective – Quilters’ Heritage Celebration Exhibition in Lancaster, PA. Her work is represented in the collections of Marietta College, Marietta OH; the Minnesota Department of Transportation Headquarters, Bemidji; 3M Company, St. Paul; Fairview Southdale Hospital, Minneapolis; University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis; Plymouth Church, Minneapolis; and the Minnesota Historical Society.