Founding Team

  • Co-Founder

    Sarah C. Blanchette (she/her) is a photo-based fiber artist working out of the Detroit, Michigan area in the U.S. 

    Her artistic practice unfolds in two intertwined veins: one exploring the "Fragmented Woman," a duality formed from the tension between her real-life identity and digital persona, and the other examining her place within her family's timeline, seeking to understand how their lives shape her own. By manipulating imagery from personal archives—self-portraits, family photos, and social media—Blanchette uses fabrics like silk, velvet, and oilcloth to reconstruct these fragmented identities. Her work is a reflective process, addressing the complexities of identity, lineage, and memory through tactile, primarily hand-sewn artworks that seek to bridge the gap between self and history. Each piece becomes a meditation on personal transformation, memory preservation, and the search for continuity in a rapidly shifting world.

    Since establishing her studio practice in 2015, Blanchette has exhibited her work nationally and online across galleries, museums, zines, blogs, and artist-run spaces. In addition to her creative practice, she is the Co-Founder of the artist collective Critical Stuff.

    Blanchette earned a BA in Journalism and Studio Art Photography from Oakland University in 2015 and an MFA in Photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2017. She is currently pursuing an MBA with a marketing concentration at Oakland University. A dedicated artist and active community member, she is a Juried Artist Member of Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) and a member of Embrace Creatives, the Surface Design Association (SDA), and the Detroit Artists Market (DAM).

  • Co-Founder

    Sonia Litynskyj is an image maker working and living in Romeo, Michigan. Her studio is transcending, and works are often made in collaboration with day to day life. { Art Work } is treated as a materialization of experimental and evolving thought.

    For Sonia, the lens, first and foremost, is a psychospiritual tool. A funnel clasped to the entrance of the individual's personal mythos, leaking through the portal as a universal language - the image.

    When used subjectively, as it always should be, the image may be approached with speculation and critique. It should form and question reality. It should not be seen as an ultimate nor a final word. The { photograph } especially, should never be held accountable as a reflection of real, but a parallel to what we know of it.

    {Taking} a photograph can be violent. Crafting image, as a method of conception, has unique and inevitable consequences. The act of crafting is messy, vulnerable, and cyclical. The image as we experience it through the meta must also be held accountable, recognized as a collective unconscious, through which I find myself often responding to or at the very least attempting to differentiate from.

    Sonia holds a BA in Studio Art Photography from Oakland University( '14) and an MFA in Photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art ( '18). She owns and operates Dark Room Oracle, a folk magic studio and art residency. 

Advisory Board

  • Curatorial Advisor

    Kat Goffnett is the Associate Curator of Collections at Cranbrook Art Museum. She received her  BA from Alma College and her Master’s in art history from Wayne State University, where she  specialized in photographic theory. She has taught art history at Wayne State University and  West Shore Community College. Prior to Cranbrook, she worked for various art organizations  including the Detroit Institute of Arts, Wayne State University Galleries, and the University Art  Collection. Her recent curatorial projects at Cranbrook include With Eyes Opened: Cranbrook  Academy of Art Since 1932 (2021), Homebody (2022), Bakpak Durden: The Eye of Horus (2022- 23), and Carl Toth: Reordering Fictions (2023), and the upcoming How We Make the Planet  Move: The Detroit Collection, Part I (2024). She also recently curated Elevation: Kaneko and  Contemporary Ceramics (2023) at Wayne State University’s Elaine L. Jacobs Gallery.