Kirsten Aune (b. 1968) grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, and attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City where she received her BFA in 1992. She lived in New Mexico before coming to Minnesota in 1994 where she maintains Kirsten Aune Textiles Studio and her Show Room and Gallery that opened in October 2020. She has had exhibitions in Minnesota, Illinois, Massachusetts, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Estonia. She has received several awards including the Jerome Foundation Travel, Arrowhead Regional Arts Council Fellowship, and Finlandia Foundation Grant. Her work is in the permanent collection at The Tweed Museum of Art, the Municipal Arts Collective in Växjö, Sweden, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation Duluth, The Duluth Children’s Museum, and in numerous private collections in Washington D.C, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York City, North Carolina, Austria, Paris, Finland, and Japan.
Kirsten creates original geometric and floral designs using stencils that she cuts by hand and then arranges in dynamic visual compositions using bright blocks of color and bold designs. She also works with silkscreen printing to create textile yardage of repeat patterns on a variety of cloth objects including wall hangings, garments, toys, table linens, handbags, lampshades, coasters, shower curtains, holiday stockings, ornaments, bracelets, hats, quilts, dolls, puppets, aprons, pillows, potholders, wallets, purses, facemasks, and more. Her artistic style has been called “Modern Scandinavian.” She has traveled to Scandinavia to research designs and to exhibit her work. Her connection to Danish, Swedish, and Finnish design is rooted in her childhood, growing up in a home of Mid-Century Modern Scandinavian furniture, and Marimekko wall hangings, that her parents collected when her mother worked in the first Danish furniture store in Minneapolis in the 1950s. Her love of color and simple lines are present in Scandinavian design and is reflected in some of her work.
