Vanessa Freund-Baden, (b. 1986; Minneapolis, Minnesota,) lives and works in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She received her BFA in Painting from The Kansas City Art Institute, (Kansas City, Missouri,) in 2008. She has utilized a variety of fine art and craft mediums in her art while her current work primarily focuses on textiles, in which she considers herself to be a painter who quilts. In the found-art tradition, she expounds upon the importance of found domestic textiles to form a piece into its own, unique expression. Often in collaboration with materials and artisan’s unfinished projects, she experiments with themes of sentimentality, tradition in women’s craft and intuitive processes. 

Vanessa recently exhibited at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center’s Home is a Teddy Bear 2024 exhibition in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. She currently works as a stained-glass painter for Conrad Schmitt Studios in New Berlin, Wisconsin, where her professional work is on display across the country in historic institutions, such as the University of Notre Dame, (Notre Dame, Indiana,) and St. Peter Catholic Church, (Lincoln, Nebraska.)