Flow State: Undergraduate students design water cloths inspired by Wisconsin’s waterways, places, and communities

When Marianne Fairbanks, Audrey Rothermel Bascom Professor of Design Studies, returned to Madison after traveling across the state on the 2015 Wisconsin Idea Seminar, she began imagining curricular ways to connect students more directly to the Wisconsin Idea.

Each year, Wisconsin Idea Seminar Director and Assistant Vice Provost Catherine Reiland presents collaborators and hosts with a gratitude bundle including handmade products that tell stories of Wisconsin.

Fairbanks reached out to Reiland with an idea: What if she created a curriculum that gave students the experience of designing, creating, packaging and selling handwoven textiles– “water cloths”–  to the Seminar to include in the gratitude bundles?

In the years since, the water cloths have become an integral part of the Wisconsin Idea Seminar tradition. 

Before engaging thread and loom, students first participate in a First Nations Cultural Landscape Tour, a walking experience that shares stories of the Indigeneity of Teejop, ancestral land of the Ho-Chunk Nation occupied by UW-Madison. During this experience, students are invited to contemplate responsibility, reciprocity, and relationships with land and water.

As the 2026 weaving class created their water cloths, they reflected on places and waterways including Wisconsin’s sea caves and James Madison Park.

Learn more in this article by Maggie Ginsberg, writer in the Division of the Arts and WIS’26 alumna: https://arts.wisc.edu/2026/04/13/flow-state/.