Tyler welcomes problem-solvers and innovators! Bring your authentic self and combine hands-on practice with theory to challenge the status quo.
The BFA in fibers and material studies from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in Philadelphia teaches you to become a multidisciplinary artist and a scholar who engages in critical discussions about textile history, production and materials research. Your work — honed inside studio practice — contributes to conversations that challenge social norms and expectations. Help pave the way forward with new perspectives in contemporary art.
Tyler offers a master’s degree in Fibers + Material Studies. Learn more about furthering your education here.
At Tyler, do more than earn a degree or study hands-on techniques. We encourage you to express yourself and push boundaries. Your faculty-mentors teach you core studio skills and challenge you to integrate materials theory, history, and research rigor into your work.
Learn to thrive in any creative discomfort as you work through problems, experiment with various media and multimedia, test different methods, and develop the courage required to change the world.
Your work embodies self-expression — not just for you, but for those who see, wear, and experience it, feeling your inspired and inclusive messages in a world too often soaked in otherness.
Industry professionals recognize the Tyler difference and seek to add artist-scholars like you to their teams.
Make Philadelphia your living studio for collaboration and inspiration. The city boasts a vibrant DIY scene, especially in wearable art, as part of its unique creative culture. As a significant city in the northeastern region of the country, Philadelphia also offers great opportunities for internships and jobs.
The Tyler School of Art and Architecture features its own admissions team, who can provide you with the information you need to make the best decision for your educational and career goals.
Tyler’s bachelor of fine arts in fibers and material studies introduces you to the methods and materials that work best on our state-of-the-art equipment.
Jacquard loom
Multi-harness floor looms
Electronic looms
Knitting machines
Embroidery machines
Long-arm quilting machine
Digital fabric printer
Tufting machines
Industrial sewing machines
State-of-the-art dye lab
Natural dye garden
In our spacious studios, flooded with natural light, you can practice hands-on skills and experiment with ways to communicate your vision. Explore different results using our digital printing options, fully equipped dye kitchen and screen-printing lab.
We want you to feel welcome, unfettered and limitless as you explore the outer edges of the medium — sculpture, video, performance, installation — in your studio practice.
Popular courses offered in Tyler’s BFA in fibers and material studies include the following.
Garment construction
Weaving
Dyeing
Screenprinting
In addition, your faculty-mentors encourage you to challenge traditional boundaries in your work through classes like Queering Materials and Soft Sculpture.
The Tyler School of Art and Architecture and the Fox School of Business Management collaborate to offer this undergraduate certificate in Creative Entrepreneurship for artists and other creatives who want to add business skills too.
This program prepares BFA students, with an approved course of study, to qualify for Pennsylvania Teaching Certification in Art, kindergarten through twelfth grade. Students must complete the BFA requirements along with 32 credit hours in education, art education, and specified liberal arts courses. Education-related studies begin in the sophomore year. Students generally take 5 years to fulfill all requirements or the 155 credit degree. All candidates for Pennsylvania Teaching Certificate in Art, K-12 must earn passing scores in the Praxis I and II National Teacher Examinations, Elementary Education: General Knowledge, and the Art Education Examinations.
In addition to learning core studio art practice skills and gaining technical fluency with fibers and materials methods, you gain many transferable skills.
While earning your BFA at Tyler, you learn to combine ideas, historical and cross-disciplinary perspectives and studio practice habits that transform you into both an artist and a scholar.
In addition to technical skills, you gain transferable skills that make you an asset in any career you choose.
Our fiber and materials studies graduates pursue an MFA or other graduate degree and / or enter a variety of fields, including production design.
Tyler’s fiber and material studies program fosters an environment that mirrors that of professional, working artists. We build community and share opportunities to support your personal development.
Whether you want to design big or small, digital or by hand, or with traditional or experimental materials, Tyler’s facilities and studio spaces boast a rich array of tools to bring your creations to life.
With the assistance of Tyler’s horticulture and landscape architecture students, you gain access to a living dye garden located in our courtyard. There, we grow native plants and dyes to use in our classes and individual practices.
Philadelphia is steeped in textile history and tradition. You can find internships at multi-national corporations and mom-and-pop shops all around Philly and the tri-state area. From textile preservation with local museums to retail and design-driven placements, you get the chance to use and sharpen your skills according to your unique interests.
Each semester, Tyler brings in visiting artists who run workshops, give lectures and work in our Queer Materials Lab (QML). The work they create in the QML stays as part of the ever-growing archive of important work.
This annual event is free to the public and features student work across multiple disciplines. It’s the culmination of semester-long interdisciplinary planning, thought, creation and collaboration.
This space serves as an archive, workshop, research site and an-ever evolving collection of materials through which queer, transgender, gender non-conforming and non-binary identifying people engage with the idea that materials can be "queer" — through their location, history, tactile qualities or maker.
Connect with your classmates and peer artists through the Tyler Fiber Arts Guild. This student-run organization fosters genuine community and artistic growth.
Examine how your future classmates at Tyler use various textiles and other media to create wearable art, soft sculptures and other contemporary art.
Brendan O'Shaughnessy Student
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Abbey Muza Student
Anna Bockrath Student
Kaila Jones Student
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Abby James Internal
Dive deeper into the innovative projects and diverse talents of our students. Discover a wider range of creative work, from cutting-edge designs to thought-provoking concepts, and see how our Tyler creative's are shaping the world around them.
Hear from Tyler’s fibers and materials studies faculty, students and alumni. Find out how this degree program expands your ideas on what’s possible and prepares you for professional practice.
Learning and working with the versatile faculty in the Fibers program at Tyler School of Art and Architecture I was able to understand textiles and garment construction from a unique perspective and approach the fashion industry in a way that not many others could. The Fibers department at Tyler School of Art and Architecture opened my eyes to the possibilities my expression can have on others and the world. Through my studies in the Fibers Program at Tyler I was able to look at garment construction in a new light, the freedom of expression and unapologetic approach to design concepts that the Fibers program promoted helped me realize my voice as an artist.
My time in the Tyler Fibers and Material Studies program gave me the skills and criticality to succeed professionally after graduate school. The Fibers and Material Studies faculty supported the development of my practice, and I was given the tools and space to engage with the ideas that are still generative in my practice now. I feel lucky to have ended up in Fibers and Material Studies at Tyler — the program really was a perfect fit, and I am grateful for those two exciting and challenging years.
Tyler attracts creative leaders and change-makers to support your generation of fiber artists. Meet your faculty-mentors and learn more about their areas of expertise and passions.
Read the latest news from our inspiring community of working artists / faculty, current students and successful alumni.
Join our online community and follow along with our Instagram posts. See photos and learn more about what’s happening in fiber and material studies at Tyler. See latest from our exhibitions and Wearable Art Show.
In addition to Tyler’s specialized admissions team, you’re welcome to contact the fibers and material studies program leadership.
Program Head of Fibers and Material Studies and Associate Professor of Instruction
