Photograph by Trista marie McGovern
Shug is an interdisciplinary textile artist, educator, and community organizer. They use traditional sewing, quilting and other craft techniques to tell stories of devotion through the mundane. By using forgotten material and textile waste Shug recontextualizes themes of memory, gender, and intimacy amidst collapse.
Shug has exhibited work spaces including but not limited to, the Trans Art Fest Brooklyn, Wavelength Space, Praxis Fiber Workshop, the Smallest Museum of Saint Paul, and The Waiting Room Gallery in Minneapolis.
They are the facilitator of Embodied Material, a collective that exhibits shows in response to reading queer and textile theory together. In 2023 they began the Olam Haba Community Quilt project, a collaborative quilt dreaming the world to come in solidarity with Palestinian Liberation. In 2023 they were also the Jerome Artist in Residence at Lanesboro Arts and received the Early Career Research and Development Grant recipient, Forecast Public Art, St Paul, MN. In 2022 they received the Friend of Arrowmont Scholarship for Queer Textile Strategies Workshop, Gatlinburg, TN.
PBS Twin Cities studio tour at the Center for People and Craft, Minneapolis, MN. 2026.