A conversation and reception with artist Adria Renee about her work, inspiration and collection will take place from 5:30-7 p.m. Oct. 11 at the Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery.

Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design graduate student and award-winning “geek couturier” Renee examines the intersections of fashion and fandom through the beloved American classic, “Star Wars,” in her master’s thesis exhibition, “A Woman’s Place is in the Resistance.” As a self professed geek-girl and scholar of fashion, Renee knows the challenges women have to navigate in these spaces.

“Too often we resign ourselves to not caring about things because we don’t want to look a certain way. But there’s also a certain power in reclaiming those things that have been shamed out of you,” Renee said.

Using crowd sourced inspiration to design from a female fan perspective for this project, Renee uses fashion to explore and challenge prevailing narratives around the geek identity and encourages viewers to more critically consider what it means to be a geek and what a geek, or more specifically, a fan can look like.