This September, during Detroit’s annual Month of Design, organized by Design Core Detroit, up-and-coming creatives and their endeavors were showcased throughout the city. From in-person and virtual exhibitions — filled with tours, workshops, and panel discussions — there’s no limit to the ways one can be inspired to make the world a better place through art.

The festival has remained strong for the last 15 years, thriving alongside the Motor City’s renaissance, so it only makes sense to paint the town in every hue imaginable in the name of art.

The nationally known makeup brand The Lip Bar, celebrated for its extravagant lip shades, hosted Detroit-based fiber artist Libby Priese at its Woodward Avenue flagship store. Priese installed a monumental soft sculpture comprised of nine quilted pieces made from repurposed fabrics in shades of red, pink, and purple. Reaching the height of the vaulted ceiling, the installation stood nearly twice the artist’s own body height. The Shop and See Fireside Chat was a collaborative event sponsored by Design Core and Bedrock.

The chat itself was unorthodox, yet fitting for Detroit’s Month of Design: Priese discussed the inspirations and process behind her work while receiving a makeover by a TLB makeup artist. Priese described her installation while the makeup artist painted her cheeks, eyelids, and lips in colors mirroring the sculpture. When asked about her inspiration, Priese reflected on her five years as a Detroit transplant, explaining how she came to appreciate the communities that serve as “the building blocks of the city—the people who bring them together.”

On her collaboration with The Lip Bar, Priese remarked: “I changed the shapes to be more feminine and really focused on the feminine narrative of the women who make Detroit. Who make it a sustainable city, a diverse city, a lovable city—and a city where I feel free to express myself in whatever era of myself I am in.”

Discarded textiles are her preferred medium, particularly men’s shirts, which offer unique textures and colors not typically found in fabric stores. She noted that 3X-sized shirts are especially abundant, affordable, and yield ample material for her quilts.

“I’m sitting down with a pile of men’s shirts and cutting them apart. There’s always the moment when I chop off the collar—and it feels like a symbolic beheading of the masculine figures who, growing up, told me what I should be like. ‘Be quiet. Be meek. Be humble. Don’t speak up for yourself.’ I’m reminiscing about my childhood and going through all of this dogmatic teaching, and I’m chopping off the collars to turn them into quilts which are very feminine material.”

The discussion concluded with Priese reflecting on the resurgence of fiber art and her role in Fiber Club Detroit, a community of textile artists who work to shape the future of emerging creatives. Her quilted sculpture draws deeply on feminine archetypes, everyday textiles, and ancestral traditions, honoring her grandmother and women like her who quilted for survival. Now standing tall, curvaceous, and bold in a woman-owned shop in the heart of downtown, her work truly symbolizes women as the building blocks of Detroit.