Bio
Anette Millington explores how visual patterns and textile embellishments convey meaning and communicate. She creates textile sculptures, prints, quilts, and collaborative design projects that connect craft and technology. As an art and design educator, Anette specializes in reflective pedagogy, materials-based thinking, and interdisciplinary methods.
Anette is Associate Director of the MFA Textiles Program and Assistant Professor of Fashion Systems and Materiality at Parsons School of Design. Prior appointments include the School Associate Dean for First Year, the interdisciplinary year of study completed by every undergraduate student at Parsons.
Upcoming exhibitions include Folded Infinity at the Museum of Mathematics in New York, NY. Past exhibitions include Material Reasoning at the Center for Craft in Asheville, NC, which highlighted recipients of the Center’s Materials-Based Research Grant. She has been reviewed online by Hyperallergic, and in print by the Boston Globe. Anette attended the School of Visual Arts for her MFA and received a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I traverse the boundaries of logic and spirit in my textile sculptures, quilts, and prints. The central element of my investigation is communicating through patterns. My work engages an expansive set of techniques, including digital surface design, woodblock printmaking, silkscreen printmaking, digital embroidery, quilting, folding, and sewing. Ornamentation takes on a significant psychological dimension in my work.
By abstracting flora and fauna, I invent symbols and patterns. In nature, brightly colored markings on prey ward off predators. These markings are opulent signals warning of poison. I am compelled by the seemingly contradictory dynamic of attention-seeking and defense, and my work includes beguiling decoration as a protective element.
I use symmetry and ornamentation to imbue objects with power, transform fear, and contend with mystery. Mirror symmetry mimics life, and I create prints and sculptures that function as anthropomorphic guardians. I activate radial symmetries to evoke compasses, flowers, and infinity pools, which I imagine as way-finders for unknown territories. Through the mathematics of symmetry in two and three dimensions, I build magic and metaphor.
interdisciplinary & COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS
My interdisciplinary and collaborative design projects connect craft and technology. The work centers on materiality & embellishment, exploring links between patterns in nature, semiotics and the history of ornamentation. These projects also investigate the way in which tools and technology impact the formulation of meaning in material form.
A project of note is Response Patterns, undertaken with the support of the Center for Craft's Materials-Based Research Grant, to invent environmentally responsive embellishment methods for textiles. Another project Coded Textiles, used computation to generate new possibilities for print, embroidered and woven design. The project mined the intersection of embellishment, semiotics and machine thinking and included collaboration with a creative coder to develop digital sketches and textile outcomes.
Higher Education Courses Taught at Parsons School of design
MFA Textiles Major Studio 4 (Capstone Thesis)
MFA Textiles Major Studio 1 & 2 (Embellishment)
Fashion BFA Design Studio Materiality
BFA Creative Technical Studio
Integrated Studio 2 Fashion
Integrated Studio 1
Digital Surface Design
Drawing and Imaging
Graphic Design 1
2D Design
Drawing