The Lynn Tendler Bignell Fiber Studio at Brookfield Craft Center shows no sign of slowing down in 2025. The BCC is already welcoming two new fiber instructors, Becca Barolli and Ryan Scails, to the rich roster of talented craft instructors teaching classes by the Still River.

In 2024, Brookfield Craft Center hosted fiber classes taught by the following instructors: Katie Strano (weaving), Rachel Barclay (sashiko embroidery), Rachel Gerowe (needle-felting), and Karin Mansberg (block-printing). Also teaching fiber classes as new instructors in the community last year were Jai Wilbert (hat-making), Emma Welty (Armenian needlelace, janyak), and Jan Rowell (Dorset buttons).

Joining their ranks this March, Bethlehem artist Becca Barolli will be showing the students registered for her beginner, one-day workshop “Random Weave Fiber Sculpture,” how to manipulate 18 and 21 gauge steel wire into sculptural forms through random weaving. The class will introduce students to different construction techniques that they may adapt and use to develop their own visions.

Barolli received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from the University of Connecticut in 2010. During her time there, Monica Bock, the co-head of the Sculpture/Ceramics Area and head of the Ceramic Art Program, introduced her to the work of 20th-century American visual artist Ruth Asawa, who is mostly known for her own work with looped-wire sculptures.

Since then, she has been working with wire, going on to receive the Ella King Torrey Award for creative innovation in her studio practice upon graduation from the Masters of Fine Arts program at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) in 2016. This achievement is personally significant to Barolli as it marked a form of recognition within the art world outside her home state of Connecticut. As a graduate student, she already had the honor of receiving the Cadogan Scholarship from the San Francisco Foundation and the SOMArts Cultural Center in 2015. Most recently, she received the Carole Eisner Award from Silvermine Galleries in New Canaan, CT.

Her journey in wire-weaving gradually developed as she learned new skills that built upon each other over the years. There was no perfect beginning – Barolli began by crocheting rebar tie wire with pliers since she “didn’t know where to get thinner wire.” Then she picked up hand sewing and random weaving with wire as she moved on to graduate school. Her experience with antique rug restoration taught her a twining technique that she then incorporated into her sculptural practice. Today Barolli uses a process that she developed that is “most similar to what is known as knotless netting.”

Wire can be a frustrating medium, Barolli acknowledges, but she has been working with this material for nearly 15 years and believes in its versatility. She is excited to share the craft “with others and see what other people will come up with.”

Her work has been exhibited on both coasts of the continental United States, most notably in the de Young Museum, Andrea Schwartz Gallery, Chandran Gallery, and Last Projects in California and at Miranda Kuo Gallery in New York.

Also joining the Fiber Studio is Bethel native Ryan Scails, who will debut at the Brookfield Craft Center as an instructor for the Center’s grant-funded youth programs: the Wednesday after-school program for students from the Alternative Center for Excellence in Danbury and the annual Hands-On Summer Youth program. He will teach multiple classes in Fiber Arts introducing young students to three fiber techniques: sashiko embroidery, needle felting, and natural dyeing.

Scails’ work is inspired by his childhood curiosity about the natural sciences. He also cites pre-colonial technologies, speculative fiction, science fiction, and George Washington Carver’s work as a botanist and painter as some of his most poignant sources of inspiration. His appreciation for experimentation with materials and substances led to his completion of a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture and Drawing from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2014 and a Masters of Fine Arts in Fibers and Materials Studies at Tyler School of Art and Architecture in 2024.

His practice, while primarily based in fiber and mostly abstract, is still multidisciplinary in nature, shifting “from sculpture to drawing to performance.” Despite the varied forms, Scails’ works are generally about invention and tool-making, a theme derived from his belief in fiber as a medium that is both utilitarian and evocative of freedom in use and representation, recognizing its role in “driving human advancement for countless generations.” He uses found objects to create vernacular tools (tools used to solve problems and meet human needs) that simultaneously are liberatory objects (items that represent freedom or the potential for freedom).

His work has also been presented in exhibitions from coast to coast, most recently from Eric Firestone Gallery in New York City and Temple Contemporary in Philadelphia, PA to the Upper Market Gallery in San Francisco, CA.

For almost a decade, Scails developed a rich body of experience in art handling in New York City and at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in New Canaan. He also attended residencies at MASS MoCA in Massachusetts, the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, New York, and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center Arts/Industry program in Wisconsin.

“I’m proud of having facilitated the work of artists I admire in the past,” Scails states. “Art and community go hand in hand, so I’ve been grateful to work in studios and institutions with the goal of seeing projects to completion.”

He now hopes to encourage more creative minds to experiment and explore his latest research in natural dyeing alongside him.