Threads of Migration: A Fashion Collection Exhibit Presentation by Tammie Pontsler

Visit Vesterheim for a free presentation by Tammie Pontsler, a designer and educator in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The exhibit Threads of Migration: A Fashion Collection by Tammie Pontsler, open at Vesterheim from November 8, 2026-January 17, 2027, shares her newest design collection. This collection was created for an MFA degree from Savannah College of Art and Design and is a visual representation of her family’s emigration story. The silhouettes of the garments lean heavily into fashion from the 1910s, the decade when her great-grandmother emigrated. The collection displays themes of preservation, adaptation, assimilation, and innovation while exploring the tension between the tailored structure and bohemian ease of fashions during this decade. Tammie has collaborated with Norwegian-American artists who practice textile and Red-Listed folk arts, demonstrating the preservation of the culture’s past. Her use of technology, including AI, digital printing, laser cutting, flat-bed printing, and machine embroidery, reimagines these crafts as a gateway to the future. By bringing the past and the future together in conversation through fashion design, the emigration experience is visually demonstrated: leaving the homeland, holding on to traditions, adapting to the new country, thriving in the future through innovation, and a new cultural identity – the Norwegian American. This exhibition is made possible thanks to gifts to the Vesterheim Annual Fund from the Red List Textile Study.