Red River Women's Studies Conference 2026

Rachel Breen is a visual artist who explores the critical possibilities of the sewing machine, which she uses to draw and create sculptural installations. Her work has been shown widely across the country and internationally, including a solo exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Rachel has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to India, the McKnight Fellowship for Visual Artists and the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship. She has had residencies at MacDowell, Ucross and Willapa Bay AiR and is a recipient of five Minnesota State Arts Board grants. Rachel holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota and a BA from The Evergreen State College. She is a professor of art at Anoka Ramsey Community College.

Anna Johnson seeks to bridge the gap between the world she lives in and the culture she came from. The imagery Johnson uses comes directly from her Chippewa culture, and she incorporates many different totem animals and traditional designs. She works with a variety of media but concentrates on drawing and printmaking. Through her collage, she employs simple texture and natural items, such as birch bark and different fabrics.

Johnson is originally from Bismarck and has lived most of her life in North Dakota. She received her BFA from NDSU in 2010. Johnson is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain band of Chippewa Indians. Most of her family members live in the Turtle Mountains in Belcourt, North Dakota, where she spends a great deal of her free time. The natural beauty of the area continues to inspire her and influence her work.

Sandra Menefee Taylor’s artmaking career spans community-oriented public art projects, studio practice, book arts, and multidisciplinary collaboration with other artists. Taylor was an early member of the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota (WARM), one of the first feminist art galleries in the country. Her work has been exhibited and collected nationally, including the Weisman Art Museum, the Walker Art Center, The Plains Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Grinnell College. She has been supported by a variety of organizations including the MN State Arts Board, National Endowment for the Arts, Medtronic Foundation, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women, Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Jerome Foundation.

Taylor’s most recent honors include being named one of three Distinguished Public Artists of 2022 by Public Art Saint Paul, and the Juror’s First Prize Award for the Cancer Never Had Me exhibition at the 2020 Nobel Conference, Gustavus Adophus College.

Delia Touché is a Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota and Assiniboine printmaker, bookmaker, and fiber artist based in the Midwest. A citizen of Spirit Lake Nation, their multidisciplinary practice explores the estranged and complex relationship they hold with their Indigenous identity, drawing from familial archives, Dakota and Assiniboine cultural frameworks, Native nuances, diaspora, wry humor and pop culture.

Delia’s has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including Travemeise (Lübeck, Germany), San Francisco Center of the Book, Missoula Art Museum, The Art Galleries at Austin Community College (Austin, TX), Cranbrook Art Museum, BULK Space (MI), Minnesota Center for Book Arts, All my Relations Gallery (Minneapolis, MN), Die Graphische (Vienna, Austria) among others.

Their work is held in permanent collections at the Walker Art Center, North Dakota Museum of Art, Minnesota Historical Society, American Prairie, Northwestern University, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, as well as in numerous private collections.

Delia earned a BFA in Drawing from Minnesota State University Moorhead and an MFA in Print Media from Cranbrook Academy of Art, where they were awarded the Gilbert Fellowship.