The Rocky Mountain Collegian

Issue date: 4/10/09 Section: News

Students and community members were in attendance at the opening of a clothing museum at the University Center for the Arts on Thursday, April 9,2009.

Judi Arndt, a retired interior and textile designer, has 400 pieces of clothing, shoes, and other goods from Central Asia, Southeast Asia, China, India and Africa that she plans to donate to CSU when she passes away.

More recently, however, she donated an Afghan boy's shirt to the collection of about several dozen Asian and African textile artifacts on display Thursday in the Avenir Design and Merchandising Museum opening gallery show.

"The 400 pieces are set up as a gift to give to the university," Arndt said. "I started to think, 'I have all these great pieces in my home, what will I do with them when I'm gone?'"

Arndt spent time traveling after she retired and started collecting pieces to help promote designers from different countries in the U.S.

"I travel with groups of people that are focused on textiles so they have important connections in other countries," Arndt said, adding that she is planning a trip to Uzbekistan with Linda Carlson, Mary Littrell, and Molly Eckmen, all instructors in the Design and Merchandising Department, to interview artists who are working to market their own designs.

"We will be going to try to promote their work," she said. "There will be an exhibit next year in the (Avenir museum) of pieces that we collect from Uzbekistan."

Arndt said that a lot of the pieces she collects now are contemporary and she buys them to help support the craft. She donates pieces to the museum so that they can be preserved and appreciated by students and community members in years to come.

"I feel like the CSU Department of Merchandising is growing tremendously and I decided it was a good fit for the pieces I have collected," she said.

Allice Wallace, president of The Avenir Foundation, which donated funds to the Avenir Design and Merchandising Museum, contributed many pieces to the exhibit as well.

Wallace said she has always been interested in textiles and clothing since her first textile class in the eighth grade.

"I'm very interested in promoting textiles as a true art form like paintings and sculptures," she said. "People think textiles are not art -- that's a misconception -- they're not just a part of our daily life, they're true art forms."

Continued...

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