Welcome to the TextileX resource guide—a growing effort created to map out and connect the vibrant textile community and resources in the Portland metro area and beyond. The foundation of this guide was built from the diversity of organizations that participate in the Portland TextileX Month festival every October.
Development of and funding for this guide have been provided by Textile Hive with additional funding from a RACC catalyst grant in 2019.
We encourage you to contribute additional resources through this form and consider becoming a member of TextileX to help further develop this resource guide as well as Portland TextileX Month.
Studios
Ali Cat Leeds
Ali Cat. is an artist and print maker living on unceded Cowlitz, Multnomah and Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde land at the confluence of two rivers, also know as Portland, Oregon. She produces her work under the name Entangled Roots Press. Her prints mingle the literal and metaphorical to illuminate and comment upon the world around us. Relief, screen, and letterpress prints span from the carnage of clear-cuts to the beauty of peoples movements. Ali’s prints pull from ancestral herstories and push towards liberatory futures; entangling lessons from gardens, symbols in coffee cups, woven threads from Armenia and Euskal Herria, to the printed page. Ali received her BFA at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland. She completed an artist-residency at Proyecto’ace in Buenos Aires in 2014, and was a member of Flight 64, a member-run, nonprofit print studio, from 2015- 2018. Ali worked as the Print Studio Technician at PNCA from 2017 – 2021. They now teach and volunteer at the Independent Publishing Resource Center.
Studios
Charlotte Flory
https://www.instagram.com/morepatternmorebetter/?hl=en
Charlotte Flory is an artist and design director living in Portland, Oregon. She comes by way of New York City, where she lived for 21 years after graduating from Parsons School of Design. Her fashion and home accessory designs sold in eponymous NYC shops such as Barneys New York, Bergdorf Goodman and ABC Carpet & Home, while a piece she designed for Louise Bourgeois hangs in MoMA, signed in red stitches “LB”. Her textile work has walked the runway for Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, and more. Working for Master Printmakers to edition hand pulled etchings of Sean Scully and Phillip Pearlstein, and learning Letterpress Printing from the grandson of Alexander Calder, her true passion for approaching design as art has offered her a lifetime of fulfilling work. “More Pattern More Better” has been her moniker for some time now, and as a Decorative Expressionist, color, pattern and especially the mix of them, is her favorite way to amplify beauty and inspire joy. Please visit her Instagram page for more @charlotteflory
Studios
Megita Denton
Intermedia artist that deeply intertwines my agricultural/land-based background. My focus is sustainability in ecological systems by utilizing all practices of – film at https://vimeo.com/megdenton, contemporary furniture, paintings, sculptures, sound, textiles, print media, welding, performance art, design, resilient landscapes, woodworking, murals with Art Seed PDX, photography, site specific public works, Nature based forms called ‘bio-anchors’ and often large formats to fit my big moods of passion. A true multidisciplinary artist.
Exploratory endeavors of environment, collaborations, and expressing interconnectedness fuels my work and relation to others, the natural and spiritual arenas- in pursuit of positive change and consciousness. I am building on the elevation of my Indigenous cultural perspective and using detritus to evoke a powerful sense of nostalgia that emits joy, contemplation, connection, and inspiration.
With a bedded foundation in the PNW soil from artistic, agricultural, and culinary roots - I have been circling with vibrations from these and filtering them through my lens. Land is the mesa from which I push and pull my art from. So, sit down at the table with me and let’s move art together…
Studios
Palmarin Merges
https://www.palmarinmerges.com/
Palmarin Merges is a Filipina American artist whose work draws from the desire to become more sustainable by re-using materials close at hand and by adapting restriction as a generative force for creation. Trained as a Printmaker, she now works primarily in mixed media, especially household waste - plastic, cardboard, etc. These common materials taken from the fabric of her daily life are processed and then transformed into pattern, collage and concrete poetry. Raised in Hawaii and California, she left Oregon in Dec. 2019 with her husband to return to Japan, this time to Tokyo. Her adventures now include exploring a variety of traditional crafts and wandering the areas in and around the Yamanote Line. Palmarin Merges holds an MFA Printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute and has exhibited in Japan, the Philippines, San Francisco, and Portland, Oregon. She has previously taught Relief, Screenprint and drawing at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Marylhurst University and Pacific University.
print sculpture sustainability textile art textile reuse visual art