If you have visited the Origins and Legacies Gallery by Textile Hive this Portland TextileX Month, your eye may have been drawn skyward. Sailing above the entrance to the galleries, leading guests to the two exhibits filling the galleries with patchwork leather fashion pieces and masterful Peruvian embroidery, are three delicate and colorful floating kites designed and built by Lucas Cantoni Jose @asflortudo.

Lucas is still figuring out how kites work. Most folks would say that it’s the responsibility of the kite to take flight in response to the force of air currents, in response to the manipulation to the being on the other end of the string that keeps them tethered to the earth. In less words, their job is to fly. Not all of Lucas’s kites fly.

 But maybe that’s okay.

For Lucas, making a kite is more about finding a way to cast the feeling of the wind into a sculptural form. “It started from this personal connection with the wind,” they say, “the stories in the back of my head about wind’s presence and the spiritual connection you can have to it.” This connection was explored as part of Lucas’s recent Master’s thesis in Print Media at Pacific Northwest College of Art. “I was in a moment of feeling down, and I wanted to make something that would lift my spirit a little bit. One of my professors connected me with another artist-professor, Koichi Yamamoto, who could maybe give me some technical tips on how to make a kite. When we talked, it turned into this whole forty-five minute long presentation about the wind, and how the wind is the central character in this whole adventure.”

Rethinking kites as a relationship less to the act of flying and more to one’s relationship to the wind changed Lucas’s whole connection to the work. “These connections were already in my life, in my hand. I didn’t even notice until I talked to Koichi, but I have a tattoo on my hand that reads ‘vento’ which is wind in Portuguese.” Like the kite picked up by a sudden gust of wind, the string tying Lucas to this concept was suddenly taut and tugging at their hand, pulling them to create.

Lucas’s kites are wonderful, ethereal things, often imprinted with delicate pastel hues that seem to catch the colors of a slow-setting sun. They make use of geometric shapes that appear as  runic figures made material, communicating stories in the sky. As part of the programming for Portland TextileX Month, Lucas will be leading a kitemaking workshop on November 16th, from 12-2 PM, in the Origins and Legacies Gallery, so you will also have the opportunity to build one of these beautiful, sculptural kites of your own. The registration for this workshop is open now at textilex.org.

If you happen to be visiting the Origins and Legacies Gallery to see “Dakota Transit: Sonic Couture” or “Threads of Time: Textile Legacies from Junín, Peru” or one of the many other workshops and events hosted there during PTXM 2024, don’t forget to look up: you’ll see kites in perpetual flight.


SWANA Stitch @Swanastitchpdx opens a community show tied to Portland TextileX Month: Origin Stories this Saturday, October 5th. With the title “Homelands Within,” the show asks contributing textile artists from the SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) communities of Portland to think about their own “origin stories.” We sat down with one of the organizers of SWANA Stitch to talk about the origins of their organization, the show, and their work in the context of the larger scope of events in the world today.

SWANA Stitch is closely tied to SWANA Rose Culture and Community Center, located at 2942 NE MLK Jr Blvd., and many of the events that SWANA Stitch organize and host take place there. SWANA Stitch actually slightly predates SWANA Rose in the timeline, but both came about and fruitfully converged in the wake of the COVID lockdown. “The SWANA community, especially in Portland proper, is fairly small,” they note, “During the pandemic, [I was seeing] a lot of people making tatreez, Palestinian embroidery, and doing circles. I was like, oh, I want to do one of those, I wonder if there is one in Portland. But I couldn’t find one. To be honest, I was wondering if there might not be enough Palestinians who also do tatreez, so maybe it could be open to anybody with Southwest Asian and North African origins who does a needle craft.” Meanwhile, Ramzy Farouki, a local Palestinain organizer and educator, and founder of the Center for Study & Preservation of Palestine as well as the Jerusalem Rose Market, expanded from there to a neighboring space with the idea of forming a cultural center to host just the types of events and groups that SWANA Stitch had in mind. “At first, a few people showed up, and it just took off from there. I think we are one of the longest continuous groups that have been meeting, and we meet every month.”

 SWANA Stitch proliferates through a variety of different events, some open to the public and some open only to SWANA community members. There is, of course, the monthly meetings (open only to SWANA folks) that form the core community of SWANA Stitch. They will occasionally host an open stitch session, which anyone can join in on, and are hoping to hold one during PTXM. Also on the horizon is a BIPOC Stitch night, which will bring together different affinity communities to share space. It’s important to the organizers to have a flexible range of openness for any event they hold, and to be able to clearly situate events that are for specific communities alongside events open to all people. “It’s interesting to think about how it’s normal to think that the only spaces that are for everyone are majority spaces, which are white spaces, usually, but we want to curate a space that’s for everyone, but is SWANA-led and SWANA-curated,” SWANA Stitch notes.

In this way, SWANA Stitch is one of the main programming components of SWANA Rose. Part of the beauty of this cultural space is how each of the programming arms intermingle and build each other up. “SWANA Rose is a space for us, by us, but it’s really open to any cultural programming by any community that has allied politics. There are artist soirees, there’s a library, a book club, yoga, a reading program for kids, film nights. I may be the primary organizer for SWANA Stitch but I also help out to organize the library.”

Building up SWANA Stitch and SWANA Rose has certainly not been without challenges, many brought about by the current global political environment. SWANA Stitch says, “We opened SWANA Rose two weeks before the start of the Palestinian genocide. Many of our members are Armenian, so there is also the Artsakh War. It’s been a trying time for our community, and we’re in survival mode.”

Even through that, connections develop and work gets done creatively to develop the cultural space. “While we’ve got a lot done, it’s not like hyper organization is at the top of the priorities, and some of the things we wanted to do haven’t happened because our attention is turned to those present issues. So I don’t think anyone was super actively being like, oh, we gotta get this library thing going. But our friend Katja, who’s not SWANA, actually, she was like, hey, what like do you just need somebody to catalog these books? Because I can totally do that. And just volunteered her and her friend’s time. And then we asked Revolutions Books, which is a local bookstore in St John’s, if they would do a program where they buy books, put them on a display in their store, and then people can buy that book for the library. One of our organizers who is a beautiful printmaker made this print that you get in exchange for buying us a book. So we’ve been collecting books through that.”

The monthly stitch sessions have been a space of comfort, community, and discussion during this past year of suffering and turbulence, and SWANA Stitch’s show “Homelands Within” emerged from those sessions. The meetings are “village style, which is, you come and bring whatever you work on,” SWANA Stitch describes, “there’s food and drink and people are working on their individual projects, exchanging ideas. Those were also historically spaces where women who have historically often been excluded from open politics, in many cultures, did their politicking. Our sessions are open to all gender expressions, of course. But you know, we talk a lot about women’s work and women’s information being gossip, but that’s also how societies were ran, and so as much of stitching is an act of connecting with ancestral culture, learning and relearning and re-honing ancestral skills. It’s also a somatic experience, the calming and soothing work with your hands. During that experience, it’s easier to even take in information and stories. In a lot of cultures you tell stories, or you have orators like speaking while people are working with their hands, because that’s somatically how humans kind of have tended to work over centuries and millennia.” In these stitches, you would see dozens of different forms and traditions of textile work, from the aforementioned tatreez to Marash embroidery to Armenian needle lace and Egyptian lace. There’s also, of course, knitting and crocheting. The work made in these stitching sessions will be on display in “Homelands Within.” Along with the show, the organizers are planning a zine about SWANA Stitch that features members of the community discussing the origin stories of their relationship to textile craft.

“We’re really excited about the theme of Origin Stories,” SWANA Stitch says, “I think one thing that is challenging for us right now is that our communities are going through like a massive trauma again. This show is an opportunity to generate resilience for our community through reminding everyone that we continue to carry these things within us. And I think that has generated a lot of like the proposals for the works that we’ve gotten have felt really meaningful. I think that offering our people a space where they can safely say what they need to say without a fear of repercussion can be part of that healing.”

This naturally led to a question about how the wider Portland (and Portland textile community more specifically) can support the SWANA community during this time. “In terms of support for our diaspora communities, within Portland, within the United States, participating in things like programming that we do, spaces that we curate, actually matters to us tremendously. There is such a campaign of propaganda and dehumanizing people, which is how we create the conditions for atrocities outside of the Western world, and so participating in and supporting specifically SWANA cultural events is one small, interpersonal way that all people can be in solidarity with our people. Being very vocal and open and unflinching in that support, too, because when people are mild or conditional in their support, it generates conditions where we then can’t speak as strongly as we need to, because we will not be protected. Let the impacted groups of people speak and lead and following their lead and not questioning their ways of expressing their anger, and not tempering our people’s demands, even if they feel hard for people to accept. Some of our core members have organized a program called Creators for Gaza, where people make art and amplify other people’s art to get visibility for our families get their stories out.”

There are also opportunities for material support. “Our people, people who are specifically members also of SWANA Stitch, run a mutual aid program where we support 47 families in Gaza in their efforts to survive, and also in their efforts to eventually evacuate. We raise money for them, and that’s work that anyone can do. One doesn’t have to be a creator and artist. When people ask us what they can do, we ask for material support specifically. And there isn’t like necessarily a guidebook for what that looks like from moment to moment or point in time and point in time, it can look like political action. It can look like donations. It can look like, you know, creating flyers specific support, creating artworks that benefit our people. I think for every people going through these things, what matters most in support is people being willing to challenge their assumptions and just listen and amplify, and people physically and materially showing up in the ways that we ask or ways that they come up with.”

All of this is deeply intertwined with the act of stitching. “I don’t really know what it is like to have non-political art, or have your art that’s apolitical,” SWANA Stitch says, “I don’t think that that exists. I think that people who believe it exists are misguided, and their art, in fact, has a politic. I think for that reason, seeing our art is also like a form of support for us, because it is like seeing us speak. And there’s some things that are kind of unspeakable right now, and I think art is one way for us to process those things, to keep going. We, as artists, get to examine this, especially with textiles, because textiles are a thing that are on our bodies and are physically tangible in our lives.”


Portland Textile Month 2024: Origin Stories is being ushered in with the opening of Dakota Transit: Sonic Couture, an exhibition dedicated to the patchwork snakeskin and leather fashions created by designer Andrea Aranow between 1968 and 1973 in NYC. The show is happening in the Origin & Legacies Gallery by Textile Hive, and opening on October 1st, 2024, with a requisite and celebratory party aiming to recapture the hip, happening world of the East Village. That vibe doesn’t just happen, especially in 2024 Portland, Oregon, without a little thoughtful party planning. That’s where Drea Johnson comes in.

Drea is not necessarily an event planner by trade. She is, however, a familiar face in the constellation of Textile Hive and Portland TextileX Month personalities and contributors. As the founder of Hidden Opulence @hiddenopulence , Drea specializes in sustainably focused alterations and small batch productions. She’s also led courses for Textile Hive on the foundation of tailoring. So how is this translating into event planning for the opening night party of PTXM 2024?

 “Honestly, it seems easy,” Drea says, “because we can stick to the simplicity of the event, which is bringing people together to share Andrea’s collection, which just naturally has qualities that encourage people to mingle, dress up, and have a good time.” Guests are enticed to dress up in their grooviest, freshest period-specific wares and enjoy the John JB Butler Jazz Trio, featuring Tony Pacini on Keyboard, and Chris Lee on drums, who will be playing some classical Miles Davis tunes and original compositions. Davis was one of Andrea and Dakota Transit’s many famous clients. Luciana Proaño will be creating an adventuresome environment with her surreal costumes and interpretive dancing. “Since vintage mending is one of my specialties, there may be some prizes for best-dressed from Hidden Opulence,” Drea hints.

Partygoers can also expect drinks from Straightaway Cocktails and a charcuterie board that hints at Andrea’s “love of the New York deli.” When we talked, the main point of emphasis that Drea and I both shared was a longing for the relaxed, creative ambience of the era of Dakota Transit, where it seemed like adventurous parties happened much more easily, and less pretentiously, than it seems like they do now.

 Drea is also hosting two workshops in the space, one focused around the concept of “Origins” and the other focused around the concept of “Legacies.” In the former workshop, titled “Pattern Odyssey: Crafting Patterns from Inspiration,” led by Dre & Fry of KFryDraws @kfrydraws, participants will be grouped and presented reference images from “unknown” locations, uncovering the hidden stories, cultural nuances, and striking visuals that can spark unique graphic patterns. Through a series of collaborative activities and group discussions, participants will learn how to tap into the visual world around you, transforming inspiration into tangible design.

The second workshop, titled Preserving Shade: Appreciating the Legacy of Culture & Plants by Dyeing with Indigo, is being co-led with Erin Eggenburg of Wrenbird Arts @wrenbirdmends. 

In this 3-hour workshop, participants will learn how to use indigo paste to create natural patterns and shapes on fabric. Through this practice, they will gain an understanding of the historical and cultural significance of plants as a storytelling medium to preserve nature’s legacy for future generations. Participants will leave with a unique indigo-painted silk scarf and a deeper appreciation of natural dyeing and cultural preservation through storytelling. Both of these workshops will take place later in October, and you can check textile.org for specific dates and times.

Until then, it’s time to put on your funkadelic best and join Drea and the rest of the PTXM team for the opening of the festival this October 1st, from 6-9 PM, at the Origins & Legacies Gallery by Textile Hive, located at 516 NW 14th Avenue.



How can one feel protected in an increasingly chaotic world? That is the central question that Orquidia Violeta @orquidia_violeta sought to wrestle with when she started making her Chalecos Protector (protective vests) in 2020. It may not bear explanation why this project felt pressing at that historical moment, with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, a fractious political environment, and the open resistance to police violence, and subsequent counterresistance, taking over our streets. For Violeta, though, it was also a way to burrow deep inside and build understandings within herself about how she relates to certain concepts and words, such as home, and make an external shell to hold those understandings.

 On a bright summer day, a few weeks ago, Orquidia was mainly concerned about how they would hang. “All fifteen are finished and ready, but I’m going to do custom hangers, and custom stands, so there’s plenty to do before the opening still,” Violeta explains as she lifts up vest after vest from storage to show to me. There are so many details on each vest, I can only absorb a small percentage of the fabric patterns, embroidered designs, and imagery as they are laid on top of each other.

 Orquidia Violeta is opening her new show, Story Within Chalecos Protector (Protective Vests) on October 3rd, 6-9 PM, at after/time collective gallery @aftertimecollective at 735 SW 9th Ave #110, Portland, OR 97205. It would be well worth your time to catch Orquidia at the show if you can, for the way that she can uniquely describe the tendrils of inspiration that erupt from each of the pieces; sometimes, it’s just a good story about building a relationship with a woman at a farmer’s market who gave her a bundle of quilting fabric, and sometimes it’s a string of words or a printed image that goes back to Violeta’s birth.

 Perhaps the best way to experience the Chalecos Protector is the upcoming workshop, on October 17th at 6 PM, at after/time gallery, in which Violeta will facilitate the creation of a collaborative community vest. Pre-cut panels will be provided that can be sewn, dyed, or decorated with salvaged fabric, weavings, and found objects. Participants will have the opportunity to reflect on what they want to communicate through their portion of the protective vests. Whether it’s a personal story, a cultural motif, or a statement of resilience, each stitch and brushstroke becomes a part of a larger narrative. After the workshop, the participant’s panels will be sewn together into a protective vest, and displayed on a mannequin in the exhibit for us all to see what the community created together.

You can sign up for the workshop here.



This fall, students at Portland State University will crack open their course catalog and see courses listed under a brand new minor being offered by the College of the Arts: Sustainable Fashion. As part of the rollout for this program, PSU @psu_textilearts is hosting two events during Portland Textile Month: Origin Stories that highlights the varied facets of the curricula, from studying the history of maker-based, indie fashion in our own city to applied experience with the practices of naturally-derived pigments and dyes. We sat down with Alison Heryer, Sue Horn-Caskey & Charles F. Caskey Professor in Textile Arts & Costume Design, to talk about the minor, these events, and the future of textile study at Portland State.

         The path to the Sustainable Fashion minor kicked off in 2019 with the addition of a handful of textile arts classes to the curriculum in the Schnitzer School of Art, which filled up with eager students immediately. Around the same time, the Oregon College of Art and Craft closed its doors, resulting in an influx of looms and other equipment that allowed PSU Textile Arts to provide a high-level technical environment for its students. “What I tried to do with that particular curriculum,” Heryer says, “is create the program I would have liked as an undergraduate that didn’t really exist, which is, how do I sort of take the skills of weaving, surface design, sewing construction, learn those types of maker skills thoroughly and meaningfully, and then allow students to apply those skills wherever they want.”

         As students took part in those classes, Professor Heryer noted that an interest in fashion came up repeatedly in classroom discussion. “It’s not just ‘I want to do fashion,’ but ‘I want to do fashion in a way that’s not like what they teach at the normal fashion schools.’ The discussion is much more about alternative form from the mass-produced approaches, and instead thinking about clothing that is one of a kind, a site of individual expression.” In this way, the Sustainable Fashion minor took shape as a program that gives students the skills where they can go and succeed in the fashion industry while thinking critically about clothing that is created ethically and sustainably. “How can we,” Heryer proposes, “start to engage people as makers of their own garments, from within their own wardrobes?”

         While the Sustainable Fashion curriculum is rooted in the School of Art and Design, with the perspectives of the artisan-maker that develop from that environment, there are two programs within the School of Business that students can pair with the minor. If the student is interested in going to work at, say, Nike or Adidas, there’s an Outdoor and Athletic Apparel certificate program that includes classes in marketing and retailing. For the student that is more interested in starting their own business, there’s the Social Entrepreneurship Certificate, which focuses more on independent, freelance/small business management. Being a minor, though, Sustainable Fashion can combine with any number of majors within PSU in ways tailored to the student. “My background is in costume design,” Heryer says, “so I think about how students over in film or theater can take these classes and apply the questions we are asking to the entertainment industry.”

         As part of the inauguration of the minor, PSU will be hosting an exhibition, Portland Fashion in the Aughts, at its AB and MK Galleries, opening Tuesday October 1st. The show, curated by Marjorie Skinner and Jessie Vickery, originated in the archive of material Skinner has kept from her time as a writer and editor on the fashion beat for the Portland Mercury. “This is such a great tie-in to the new minor,” Heryer says, “because the designers and artisans featured in the exhibit really embody the kind of maker spirit inherent to the culture of the program. Portland is ad has been a special scene in terms of fashion, it has that small-batch, DIY ethos, with people working sustainably, with repurposed materials.” In capturing a pre-Instagram era of “fashion at a remove from fashion’s capitals,” the exhibition will explore how those styles “rarely referenced the dictums of the global fashion establishment, instead focusing more on expression than commerciality.” Tying into Portland Textile Month 2024’s theme, this show could be seen as a depiction of Portland’s “Origin Story” as a global source of inspiration for maker-based fashion and aesthetics that culminated in the decade-and-a-half following the aughts. If you have your own memories and photographs from this era that you would like to add to the archive in the lead-up to the show, you can visit the exhibition website at: https://www.portlandfashion2000s.com/

         While Portland Fashion in the Aughts showcases the fashion history side of the program, PSU will also host another event during Portland Textile Month that speaks towards the applied production side of the curriculum. On October 9th, at 5 PM, three speakers will take part in a roundtable discussion titled “Color Origins: Pigment to Product.” This panel discussion, coproduced with Sator Projects and featuring Julie Beeler, Trish Langman, and Alicia Decker, looks at ways artists and designers work with naturally derived pigments toward more sustainable applications in art, textiles, and fashion. This event is also tied into Julie Beeler’s show Take Root, opening September 7th and running through November 2nd at Sator Projects, which features new solo works tied to her work as author of The Mushroom Color Atlas @mushroomcoloratlas (coming out on September 3rd from Chronicle Books, and viewable as a website at https://mushroomcoloratlas.com/) Alongside Beeler on the panel, Trish Langman and Alicia Decker both teach courses in the Sustainable Fashion Curriculum (Decker in Sewing Construction and Textile Design and Langman in Sustainable Fashion Practice) and have deep experience in working as sustainably-minded designers and textile producers.

         This is only the start, the “Origin Story,” if you will, of the Sustainable Fashion minor at Portland State, and there is much to look forward to as the program comes into reality. Of particular note is the new arts building that PSU is breaking ground on soon, which will bring together the various factions of the School of Art, currently spread across campus, under one roof. As part of this new building, Textile Arts will have a sizeable increase in space, and with that, the ability to add more state-of-the-art machinery and studios. “With these new facilities,” Heryer says, “it’s going to provide students with a lot of opportunities to dig into these processes. And with the new space, it’s my goal that we can have new ways of engaging with the wider textile community, and become even more of a hub of textile innovation on the West Coast.” The new arts building is expected to open in Fall 2026; until then, we can look forward to the great programming that PSU Textile Arts is providing to coronate Sustainable Fashion, as part of Portland Textile Month 2024: Origin Stories.

Walking into Sincere Studio @sincerestudiopdx for the first time, I would describe the space’s vibe on first impression as “cozy industrial.” Frances Andonopoulos’s brainchild, opened two years ago, effectively melds the twinned lineages of fabric work, that of the domestic spaces of congregation, the sewing and quilting circles that gave (primarily) women a way forward for artistic expression, with a slightly more workerly environment. Which isn’t to say, of course, that Sincere Studio is anything like a factory. It’s a community sewing studio: a hub for community members to come together and work on their individual projects during open hours, a classroom for textile education, a meeting place for clubs and affinity groups, and a landing spot for community-based projects.

Andonopoulos founded Sincere Studio in 2022 as a response to a need they saw for an easier point of access to sewing education. “More people are becoming interested in sewing and mending and making things that last a long time.” Frances says, “But you need a sewing machine, which is a couple hundred dollars, along with a lot of the other things needed to get started. And while there are existing spaces, some people aren’t able to access them for whatever reason.” In the nearly two years that Sincere Studio has been open, they’ve taught around 400 people how to sew, which attests to the space they’ve carved for themselves in the textile ecosystem.

For Frances, fostering the creation of Sincere Studio developed from an early passion for mending and quilt-making based in a sense of practicality. “I’m a person who likes to try all of the hobbies, but this just really stuck with me, and I think that’s because it was so useful in day-to-day life. I always tell people, even if you don’t end up liking sewing as a hobby, it’s still a skill that you have. I compare it to using a lawnmower. Maybe you don’t love to mow the lawn, but knowing how to use a sewing machine can solve some problems and make oneself a bit more self-sustainable.”

 Sincere Studio also aims to help people generate a stronger attachment to the world and things around them, through community building through communal making. “I think people are interested in having less objects in their home, but those objects having more meaning to them. One beautiful, meaningful quilt instead of six blankets from Crate and Barrel. It’s not about having a more minimalist life, necessarily, but a more meaningful space.” There are other events that Sincere Studio hosts that reflect the connections community members have to the things they make, like Frances’ personal favorite event Sew And Tell, in which participants bring a project they are working on and talk about it. Some of the participants are people that just started learning to sew in Sincere Studio earlier that year, and Frances notes, “they are showing off these amazing garments, things that are really cool, complicated, and intricate. It’s so cool to see.” As the community grows, Frances is making plans for more skill share opportunities to connect the different segments of the community, from the new learners to the seasoned veterans of their niche.

If there is a significant challenge in facilitating all of these different facets of Sincere Studio, it is perhaps a predictable one: money. “I feel like every nonprofit would say this,” Frances says, “but if we could do it the way we really wanted, everything would be free. But that’s not workable. So you have to always figure out what’s the balance of how much free stuff we can offer people while still keeping the lights on. We’ve been trying to get into the grant world, but that has its own barriers to entry. But the community is so supportive and excited about this space, so it hasn’t really been difficult in any other sense.”

For Portland TextileX Month 2024: Origin Stories, Sincere Studio will be hosting a community quilting event titled “Stitching Stories.” Inspired by the impactful lineage of collaborative art-making projects such as the AIDS Quilt, participants will contribute textile pieces that symbolize their own personal origins which creates a shared portrait of the diverse social fabric of the community within Sincere Studio. The workshop event will take place over two sessions, with the fabric pieces being shared and placed in the first session and the quilt being hand-tied in the second session. This workshop will be a great way to invite new people into the studio and blending them with the existing community. When they walk in, they’ll find a welcoming space, one that is open to all identities and bodies, a space that welcomes them to both get down to work and to get to know each other.

“Stitching Stories” will take place on Sunday, October 13, 12-4 PM for Part 1 (Contributing a textile to the community quilt) and Sunday, October 27, 12-4 PM for Part 2 (Quilting Bee). Sincere Studio is located at 2636 NE Sandy Blvd, Portland, OR, 97232. For more information, visit sincerestudiopdx.org.

 



Lauren Lesueur has big plans for the two story walls held up by the massive, deep red beams in the elle gallery + shop, her new storefront concept set to open on September 1st. Or, rather, she has big hopes for the plans of the artists she can’t wait to bring in to the space. “Even though I’m planning on picking one artist a month to showcase, I want to do a collaborative photography showcase… I want to see every inch of these walls covered with photography. I’ve saved about 250 or 300 photographers I’m really excited about.” That is only one plan among many for elle gallery, though, and that one is comparatively far in the future. “I know that Jasper York will absolutely fill the space in September, which means I’m saved from having to have all my chairs and furniture in there yet!” Lauren notes conspiratorially, “And I can’t even imagine what Limei Lai will do with the space for Portland TextileX Month.”

elle gallery + shop is located on SW Pine between SW 2nd and 3rd; eagle-eyed observers may note that makes the gallery a downstairs neighbor to Textile Hive, home of Portland TextileX Month. While Textile Hive is tucked away on the fourth floor of 133 SW 2nd Ave, elle gallery+shop bares itself to passing traffic with a glass edifice that will create the perfect invitation into the space. Lesueur, with a background in merchandising and sales, has spent most of 2024 conducting on-the ground research for the space, sitting across the street for days at a time and observing the local populace that would, in time, become her clientele. “It became clear that the type of store I had in mind originally would not work for this setting, for this downtown Portland neighborhood, so close to the waterfront. There’s a lot of families that walk around this neighborhood, as well as travelers here for work, walking back and forth from the hotel to the waterfront, looking for something to do outside of their hotels after business hours and on the weekends.”

These observations have thoroughly shaped the design of the space. “I want the shop to be foregrounded in the front half of the space, made to be inviting and full of practical, usable items. I want families to feel comfortable walking in here with their children, and conventional gallery spaces don’t always have that vibe. If it’s not kid friendly, then people may shy away from coming in, because they’re going to be worried about the kid breaking shit, right? So I thought the best thing to do is to split the space in two. So there’s this front part and the beams in the middle, and the gallery is this cozy space in the back.

Lauren has interrogated how she wants to have the back half of elle, which she conceptualizes as the more gallery-focused side of the space, to feel different than your run-of-the-mill white wall gallery as well. “I looked towards well-done hotel lobbies and spaces like that for inspiration. I want the art space to feel comfortable, like you can sit and relax there for as long as you want, and the partition between the spaces exists so artistic people feel like it’s a safe space to just be, to come and draw or just do what they want to do. But for it to still feel beyond the experience of just being at home or in a domestic space. It’s elevated but comfortable. So I’ve been looking at *a lot* of unique chairs.”

The plan is for the gallery to be given over to a new artist every month, and for the artist to have the freedom to customize the space to fit their vision. For Portland TextileX Month, Limei Lai will be exhibiting the show The Passionate Red and Glorious Gold in the space. Lai is a frequent contributor to PTXM and we are pleased to be showcasing her work again this year. In this show, Lai will conjure memories of her hometown of Chaozhou, which is well known for its heritage of wood carving, embroidery, and ceramic craftsmanship. Among them, ceremonial embroidery from Chaozhou has a strong element of gold thread, which Limei Lai will feature in a mixed-media installation inspired by the childhood memories of the women from her hometown and the aprons they made to protect newborns and toddlers. Lai’s work often carries a collaborative element, and this installation is no different, as visitors will be invited to share their own origin stories and creative inspirations through writing and drawing and adding to the piece.

elle gallery will not only be home to gallery shows and the storefront, but host workshops and live events as well. There are two workshops planned in the space for Portland TextileX Month. Felicia Murray, another mainstay of PTXM, will be putting on a tufting workshop. Murray has cultivated a substantial fanbase for her bright, delightful tufted landscapes, while working to make the craft more accessible and therapeutic than ever through her Curious Creator take home kits and workshops. In facilitating this workshop, Murray will be providing the space for participants to have their own origin story with tufting, creating a complete 15×15” tufted rug.

The other workshop, put on by Maker Mayhem PDX, focuses on the younger audience that Lauren Lesueur knew would be a crucial part of elle’s appeal. In the Maker Mayhem Kids Loom workshop, youthful fabric aficionados will be welcomed into the gallery to learn how to operate a loom and make a wall hanging. Maker Mayhem PDX is a phenomenal part of the Portland artist community, a mobile studio that brings artistic experiences to children throughout the city. We at Portland TextileX Month are very excited to find a neighbor like elle gallery + shop who is as passionate about fostering a love of textiles in their space as we  are throughout the month’s festivities.

Even in the process of moving in and preparing for the grand opening of elle gallery, with the walls mostly bare and the bespoke furniture not yet settled, there is a palpable warmness in the space. Perhaps it comes from the soft feeling of your shoes on the hardwood floors, or the warm bounce of light absorbed by those massive beams holding up the walls, or the soft notes of mid-century jazz playing on the sound system. It seems, though, that it mostly comes from Lauren herself, busily adjusting pedestals and curtains and rigorously studying how all of the details of her space come together to create the whole environment. With a baseline like that, elle gallery + shop will be a magnificent center for art, crafts, and maker products for a long while to come. 

Elle gallery + shop is located at 207 SW Pine, Portland, OR 97204. The gallery’s grand opening is September 1st, 2024, from 12-8 PM.

Textiles and fiber arts come with predetermined descriptive phrases. Comfort, delicacy, care and domesticity act as firm descriptive phrases that oftentimes hinder the further evaluation of the textile medium. When digital and industrial methods are introduced, we owe it to ourselves to insert these factors into a larger issue concerning perception and dialogue around the works. How should a recipient or observer of an artwork respond when something that tries cozying up to you suddenly reveals a precocious hostility?

In this review published in Contemporary Art Writing Daily of Petra Cortright’s 2020 show Borderline Aurora Borealis, the author confronts Cortright’s attempt at using textiles as a translation for ethereal or fleeting computer images. In regards to Cortright’s exhibition, the author states: “Everything that makes virtual space unique is lost in order to give you, prospector, something to bite.” Ultimately, the works in the show are created to impress ‘Art dads’ and collectors in the way the works show off digital media applied to a ‘traditional’, physical form. Cortright’s theme of Post Internet Art vocalized through the textile medium strips away both of their uniqueness and you are left with what the author calls: “A cardboard cutout replacement of someone famous.” The verity of this claim lies in the motion of how printing on fabric connects to a harsher and ‘uglier’ method of production, far detached from presumptions of graceful purity often connected to the production of textile works. Cortright’s digital paintings become reproductions in a form that forces the fabrics through a printer and come out on the other side as a ‘perfect’ translation – existing without flaws or marks. The result is the production of a ready-made object, snatched from industry and applied a price tag filled with preconceived notions. In this observation, there is also an implied, cynical play on the viewer expected to accept the built-in ‘friendly’ connotations to textiles when in truth, the medium and process are grinding at each other – rendering them both hollow. Industrialization and digitization does not happen without the textile industry. The invention of the Jacquard Loom in 1804 allowed an unskilled laborer to produce the same patterned fabric quicker than a master weaver. By using punch cards, the loom would configure the correct method of creating patterns and this use of binary code would later lay the groundwork for computer programming.

Today there are machines such as the Tc2 Digital Jacquard Loom that connect pre-industrial methods, early Jacquard technology and modern digital software to create a making experience that is interesting both liberating and limiting. Working on a Tc2 gives you the same amount of neck and back pain as a regular floor loom, but through throwing a shuttle back and forth you can end up with images of internet fragments, algorithmically generated patterns or digitally created forms that are translated through the programmed lifting of warp and weft. The Tc2 however comes with a $33,000 price tag, and is often locked behind institutional doors, or a limited selection of residencies. This creates a hefty schism between two very separate forms of textile production. One operates in the private – stitching and weaving solely by hand in an effort to reconnect with ‘simpler’ ways of making. The other is dependent on institutional support that can sometimes dictate the end product. What do people want to see from textile artists where precious spots are available for this high-priced method of production? Salacious curveballs or streamlined, prewritten, copycatted artist statements? Oftentimes we are met by the latter… Do trends in the art world dictate what we end up seeing from these precious opportunities? Questions like these linger perhaps in the minds of people who hold authority over these production methods. Textile and fiber works are part of the loosely defined ‘democratized’ art sphere as there is wider acceptance of ‘private methods of making’ that are not taught by art institutions. Yet how are people still shocked by the bold and fresh Quilts of Gee’s Bend, regardless of their disconnect to digital technologies? With craft seeing an uptick in popularity in a world that is back to valuing human touch, there are instances of artists cutting out the middleman, the tools, instruments and the studio to get straight to the point and order industrially produced rugs with whatever image they might desire. Drop shipping services have made it easier to custom order textiles to portray your intended image without involving the canvas, the paper or other substrates. Canvas or linen exude luxury and glamor, paper alludes to quickness, but textiles offer another distinguishing characteristic – the aspiration of care, labor and domesticity. However, the products which you order are completely anonymous, made by what might as well be ghosts, the results of the production itself carry with it a similar poetry. The industrially made textile is no longer connected to care, or comfort, rather it is now attached to global pollution, child labor and the navigation of a terrain littered with scams and untruths. This method of making is utilized by design studios, established artist or exhibition spaces that build a narrative of the object as something other than a pointlessly expensive and materially consuming laser print. In the end, there is nothing wrong with asking for a dollar, or having a somewhat antagonistic art practice. Stitching, knitting and crocheting is making a comeback, marks indicate labor, which again identifies a sort of ‘labor value’. But does the origin of this labor stand out as meaningful? And what about its connection to technology and the hierarchies it creates within the textile world? And when does the process of labor become indistinguishable between purely industrial and that which is just the industrial oversight of the artist? The fastidious MFA student, the factory worker or the grandmother with the quilting setup are all working within the textile sphere, yet the product’s connotations are ever-changing depending on whose hand it touches. As the world changes and machine learning and AI art generators are the latest new fads to hit the average consumer, is there not a point to be argued that we owe it to ourselves to preserve a ‘purity of making’, or leave extra space for human failure? Industrial or digital textile production methods are impressive, yet dull, temporary and sometimes exploitative. A perfect product might hold high monetary value, but the diaphanous textile is forever ethereal and alluring in its imperfections.

Artwork and text by Jens Pettersen.

 

 

Blog by Sheridan Collins and graphics by Caleb Sayan, October 2020

In the late 1960s, race riots had exploded in Portland’s Black community stemming from alleged police brutality and racism. Subsequent police shootings of Black youth increased the animosity. In the 1970s, some 200 homes and businesses in the mainly African-American neighborhood of Albina were being razed for the controversial expansion of Emanuel Hospital. Starting in 1970, under the plan of conservative school superintendent Robert Blanchard, schools in Black neighborhoods were being closed and Black students bused to white schools.

In 1975, the Calmax Symposium held in Corvallis on “The Status of Blacks in Oregon” decried the “Second Reconstruction Era” where Blacks were not involved politically or economically, and were afraid to speak up for each other.

In this environment, 15 African-American women in Portland came together in 1974 to create a quilt to celebrate Black history. Quilting has endured through history as a common social activity among women of all ethnicities and races, who gather together to make beautiful, functional textiles while building community.

The 15 women in Portland dedicated their quilt to the past, present and future of democracy and their Black heritage.

Afro-American Bicentennial Committee posing in front of quilt. Courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society.

Their plan was to complete it by the time of the United States Bicentennial in 1976.

The process challenged them to decide which of many Black success stories to tell and how many historical facts to include. The quilt was divided finally into 30 blocks, spanning Black history in America from the time of Columbus in 1492 to the era of Hank Aaron in 1974. Red, white and blue stripes divide each block from the others, unifying the quilt aesthetically and underscoring the overall patriotic message the quilters intended that Black history is a stirring and integral part of American history. Each woman created a block, and several sewed more than one. The group ultimately decided to call it the Afro-American Heritage Bicentennial Commemorative Quilt (AAHBCQ), going so far as to copyright the name to protect the artistic value of the quilt.

After completion, the quilt was celebrated in a well-publicized ceremony in Portland and exhibited at Oregon Historical Society. Desiring for the quilt to stay in Oregon, the quilters voted to donate it to OHS, and it became part of the collection in 1977. Subsequently, it traveled to the W.E.B. DeBois Gallery of Harvard University and the Department of State in Washington, D.C., among other places. It has been seen only rarely since then, last exhibited in Portland in 1997 before going on display October 1, 2020, at OHS. Ten days later, on Indigenous Peoples Day, it was stolen after a mob broke into the OHS building. The quilt was recovered almost immediately but suffered water damage and some color bleeding and will undergo conservation work before going on display again.

The quilt has taken on new interest and renewed importance, considering the social injustice issues that swirl around the city and country today. To profile the quilters

is to learn something about how they rose above the racial injustice of their times as Portlanders. As African-Americans, they all suffered degrees of racial discrimination in their daily lives and yet made huge contributions to strengthen Portland’s social and political fabric. This quilt represents their pride in their country and their race, and their hope for unity in community, and so can offer lessons for Portland today.

The women represented the best of their African-American community in Portland. Their names can be found in Who’s Who in the West, the Dictionary of American Women, the Oregon Journal’s 10 Women of Accomplishment, and many other volumes. Half had college degrees, or more. It was Jeanette McPherson Gates who called them together with the idea of the project, and she continued as one of the co-chairs throughout the two years of work. More than anything else, the women wanted this quilt to be a means of teaching people about Black history.

Education was a keystone of Jeanette Gates’ life. After growing up in New Orleans, she graduated summa cum laude from West Virginia state College in 1948 and then took a Master’s in business administration from New York University. With her husband, Jeanette Gates lived and worked in Japan for two years during the postwar occupation. Later, returning to Portland, she would teach business and accounting at the college level and develop curricula for Portland Public Schools and Portland State University.

Despite many disappointments in a racist society, Jeanette Gates fought injustice where she found it, according to her daughter Sylvia Gates Carlisle, the only living quilter and now a medical doctor in California. In 1970 her mother sued Georgia Pacific for hiring discrimination in U. S. District Court in Oregon, and won. “She was strong,” Sylvia says. “You had to be.”

Sylvia says it was difficult for her growing up Black in Portland. Her mother, though, fought against invisibility. She would not let Sylvia read books like Tom Sawyer that portrayed Blacks in a subservient and ignorant way. Sylvia remembers her mother taking issue with the curriculum in Portland Public Schools for its poor telling of Black history. Jeanette Gates put together an alternative curriculum and made Sylvia present it to Superintendent Robert Blanchard.

Sylvia’s block, #13, celebrated the Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 ending slavery in southern states–her image of a clenched fist a symbol of the determination of African-Americans to gain equality in all aspects of American life.

Jeanette Gates quilted three blocks: Block #7 and #19 in honor of her idol 19th-century writer, speaker, abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass, and Block #12 titled 40 Acres and a Mule, a reminder that most Blacks remained landless and economically disadvantaged years after emancipation.

Gladys Sims McCoy was another of the quilters, well-educated with a master’s degree in social work. She created block #25, recalling the Supreme Court decision of Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education which struck down segregation in public schools. In a second block, #4, she honored poet Phyllis Wheatley, a slave from Senegal who in 1773 became the first Black in America to publish a book of poetry. While Wheatley’s might not be a household name, Gladys McCoy’s is well known in Oregon. In 1970 she became the first person of color elected to public office in OR, winning a spot on the Portland Public School Board.

Gladys McCoy had grown up in the Jim Crow South where racism was blatant. In Portland, she recognized that racism was just as strong but more subtle. All the same, from the school board she was elected Multnomah County Commissioner two times in a row, and then Multnomah County Chair twice. In 1979, the county named the health department building for her, and the new building dedicated last year bears her name.

According to McCoy, things were not worth doing if “others are not better off as a result.” The Gladys McCoy Award was established in Portland in 1994, a year after her death, given to an individual who has exemplified her life by making major contributions to civil rights, human rights, affirmative action, children and youth, family issues, community, neighborhood, local political party, local government, environmental issues and/or education. It shows the strength in her family that Gladys’s husband William McCoy in 1972 became the first African-American to win a seat in the Oregon legislature.

Black men have been part of American history for centuries, as free men as well as slaves. In Block #1, Martha Payne profiled Alonzo Pietro, the Black pilot of the Spanish ship Santa Maria, who arrived here with Columbus in 1492. Martha Payne worked for years for United Way. Her son was one of the first Black men to graduate from the Air Force Academy. In 1977 she was named Oregon Mother of the Year. Martha Payne quilted two more blocks of great importance to Black history, memorializing in #14 and #15 the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery in all the United States, and the 14th Amendment giving civil rights to former slaves.

Quilter Kathryn Hall Bogle’s achievements were in journalism, starting while a student at the University of Oregon when she sold an article to the Christian Science Monitor about racial slurs. Of the quilters, Bogle had lived in Oregon the longest at 65 years. As she built her news career, though, she couldn’t manage to get hired as a fulltime reporter. In 1937 she told about that and other problems being Black in an article for The Oregonian titled, “An American Negro Speaks of Color.” The newspaper paid her for the piece–the first time The Oregonian ever paid a Black person for an article.

Kathryn Bogle continued to write as a freelancer for Black papers like The Scanner, the Observer, the NW Enterprise in Seattle, and the Pittsburgh Courier. In 1993 she was received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Portland Association of Black Journalists. Kathryn Bogle chose to quilt Block #21 recognizing the Black National Anthem “Lift Up Your Voice and Sing,” and Block #24 honoring President Harry Truman’s 1948 Executive Order integrating the Armed Forces. Her son Dick

Bogle followed his mother in a news career after eight years as a policeman, becoming the first Black on-air TV reporter in the Northwest. He was later elected to the Portland City Council and was a major supporter of jazz in the city.

Quilter Mildred Love had a career working for the Federal Government. It was her choice to profile Tom York in Block #6. York took part in the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-06 as a slave of William Clark, learning sign language and acting as interpreter in interactions with the Indians. York was freed at the end of the expedition. Mildred Love also quilted Block #8 of Harriet Tubman who worked the Underground Railroad to free dozens of Black slaves, and #30 of Hank Aaron, the Home Run King of professional baseball in 1974. After the quilt was finished, Love was thrilled to finally meet Aaron when he came to Portland.

Quilter Rebecca Miller got to meet the subject of her block #27, too, Leontyne Price, when Price visited Portland in 1975. Born in Mississippi, Price learned to sing from her mother, developing into a world-famous soprano, signing with the Metropolitan Opera Company in 1960, and winning numerous awards, including 19 Grammies and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Altogether, Rebecca Miller made five quilt blocks, more than any other quilter, and had the idea of red, white and blue striping between the blocks. Her other blocks included #9, The Dred Scott Decision, the Supreme Court’s horrendous ruling under Chief Justice Roger Taney that a slave was not a citizen and couldn’t sue for his freedom, as well as #10 of Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute; #16 about the 15th Amendment which gave Blacks the right to vote; and #20 of Mary Church Terrell, one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree and a lifelong fighter for racial equality.

Quilter Eddie Rollins, a nurse, chose to present Dr. Carter G. Woodson in block #17. A scholar, writer and historian, he is called the father of Black history for chronicling the contributions of Blacks in America. Eddie Rollins also depicted an image of the Courts in block #5, stitching them like three stair steps—District courts, Appeals courts, Supreme Court. In an interview in 1976, Jeanette Gates explained the reason for that block: “Everything that we have accomplished that has meant anything to us as a race has been through the courts.”

Naomi Owens honored the railroads in block #11, which–besides uniting the country from coast to coast–gave hundreds of jobs to African-Americans and became the economic engine for Blacks in Portland. Naomi Owens was said to be “persistent in her dedication to Revolutionary War heroes” and quilted block #2 of African-American patriots Crispus Attucks, who died in the Boston Massacre in 1770, and Prince Whipple, who crossed the Delaware River with General George Washington on Christmas Day, 1776.

Quilter Mildred Reynolds was a co-chair of the bicentennial quilt project. Among her many community activities, she was president of Jack and Jill of America,

dedicated to raising African-American children to be leaders, and a charter member of the Portland chapter of Links, a national Black women’s civic organization. Her husband Walter was the first Black to receive a degree from the University of Oregon Medical School. Mildred Reynolds’ block #23 honored Dr. Charles Drew, an African-American surgeon who was a pioneer in blood research.

Ozella Canada was a leader in the Urban League Guild of Portland and the Council of Negro Women. In Block #3, she depicted Richard Allen, the first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, born a slave in Philadelphia in 1760. In block #26, she honored trumpeter Louis Armstrong, born poor in New Orleans on July 4, 1900, who became a goodwill ambassador to the world through his music.

For Lylla Phillips the quilt represented “an artistic documentary of the past and the present, as well as the spirit of the future,” quoted from a radio interview at the quilt’s dedication. In Portland Lylla Phillips sat on the board of the NAACP, watching her husband struggle for years with employment discrimination that was documented in The Oregonian in 1974. She tied with Mildred Love for the most stitches in the quilt and was responsible for all the binding work. She quilted block #22 portraying contralto Marion Anderson, the first African-American to sing with the Metropolitan Opera. After being denied permission by the Daughters of the American Revolution to perform at Constitution Hall on Easter Sunday 1939 because of her skin color, Anderson sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before 75,000 people and a radio audience of many more.

Musical contributions by Black Americans appears again in June Border Brown’s block #18 showing Jubilee Hall and the Jubilee Singers. As a graduate of Fisk University in Nashville, June Brown had a close connection. The Jubilee Singers first came together in 1871 at Fisk in an effort to keep the African-American school open. Jubilee Hall was built with money raised from their performances, and Fisk survives today as a private liberal arts university.

In their quilt blocks, Sarah Mayfield, a nurse, and Hazel Beatrice Whitlow, an elementary school teacher, focused on the civil rights struggle of the 20th century. Mayfield’s block #29 honors the Civil Rights Act of 1964, guaranteeing equal rights for all. Whitlow’s block #28 portrays The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. King’s efforts to achieve full civil rights for African-Americans won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, the same year the Civil Rights Act became law.

Overall, the quilt’s message has proved to be an uplifting one, then and now. Despite their collective history of disappointments, and arguably the hollow promise of the Bicentennial, the makers of the Afro-American Heritage Bicentennial Commemorative Quilt decided to fight racism by stressing citizenship rather than bitterness. They sought to look at the road ahead showing their pride in country, race and community, while honoring the best of what was past. This beautiful textile is a marker of time and place but can also serve as a road map to Portland citizens for repairing racial divides and working in common for a bright future.

View all of the blocks as. well as a panel discussion featuring Silvia Gates Carlisle through this Portland Textile Month virtual exhibit.

 

 

A few years ago, I read Grace Lin’s Where the Mountain Meets the Moon to my young children. It’s a story about a little girl who lives in the Valley of Fruitless Mountain. As its name suggests, the village is cursed with misfortune and barren soil, and its residents stricken with hunger and poverty. She subsists on the fantastical stories her father tells her and is especially taken by the character of the Old Man of the Moon, who her father claims can tell her how to bring vegetation and abundance back to Fruitless Mountain. Emboldened by her desire to bring happiness to her family, the little girl sets off on a journey to find the Old Man of the Moon. In the vein of the classic hero’s journey story, she meets friends and challenges along the way. In one village, she is given a multi-colored jacket to keep her warm before she ascends the mountain. Even though the jacket is made of mis-matched cotton scraps sewn together, the little girl immediately feels a deep sense of comfort and warmth when she puts it on. When she bids the villagers goodbye, the little girl is astounded when she notices that all the children’s jackets have a scrap missing from their sleeves.

At this point in the story, I stopped to ask my children why they thought there were missing pieces from the village children’s jacket sleeves. Without missing a beat, my eight-year-old son said, “Because they cut it out and put them together to make her jacket!” My daughter’s eyes lit up with realization and her nimble mind quickly added to her older brother’s explanation, “And! And! It’s like magic because all the little pieces became one very warm jacket!”

Children are such astute observers, and can so deftly make sense of the world through an understanding that extends beyond logic. I loved that my son immediately recognized the collective effort of the village children and that my daughter invoked magic to explain the jacket’s super warm qualities. They were able to extrapolate a reading of this detail in the story that was whole and poetic.

“What if I told you,” I offered the children, “that I could show you this magical jacket?” The children clamored into my lap and pleaded for me to show them. “Next time you come to Ama’s gallery,” I promised.

“Ama,” is what my children call their grandmother, my mother. And the “gallery” is a space in the offices of our family business – a children’s clothing brand and retailer in Taiwan – that houses my mother’s collection of handmade children’s clothing she has collected over the last thirty

years. The pieces in my mother’s collection – children’s hats, bibs, shoes, clothes, baby carriers – are from Taiwan, Southwestern China, and Southeast Asia; most are from the early to mid-20th century.

In my mother’s collection is a jacket that looks exactly like the warm coat described in Lin’s book. It is made of multi-colored diamonds of fabric, stitched together in a geometric pattern and lightly padded. This type of jacket is known as bai jia yi, a “hundred household garment.” Back when infant mortality rate was high in China, families welcoming a newborn baby would send someone to go out into the village to beg for scraps of fabric from as many households as possible. These scraps – each one imbued with the blessing of the family from where it came – would then be sewn together to form a jacket, shirt, or pants for the baby, forming a magical shield of protection for the baby. The garment was understood to be made from the blessings from one hundred households.

As promised, I brought my children to “Ama’s gallery” to show them the magical jacket. They were familiar with my mother’s collection of hand-embroidered or expertly wax-dyed objets d’art, but were never as impressed as the moment they laid eyes upon the bai jia yi. In terms of technique, quality of fabric, and composition, there are so many other items in my mother’s collection that inspire awe, but this jacket – one made from a mis-matched pastiche of leftover fabric scraps – was the one that elicited an audible wow from my children, because they understood the magic in creating something new out of something old. They could see the magic of having stories embedded within the fibers of the jacket, imbuing it with powers only its wearer could feel.

What a radical concept the bai jia yi embodies – not only does it illustrate the practicality of making something new out of old scraps, it proves how the value of something created through the intentional act of repurposing can be exponentially increased. The receiver of such a gift, like the little girl in Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, is protected by the physical reminder that she is a part of a larger community and her spirit is buoyed by the graces of many.

brenda Lin

9/10/20

Taipei, Taiwan

About the Author:

Brenda Lin grew up among the myriad of antique children’s textile that her mother collected. She received her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. Her first book, “Wealth Ribbon: Taiwan Bound, America Bound’: was a collection of interconnected personal essays on family and cultural identity. Lately she has been writing about the intersection between text and textile. She lives in Taipei and is the head of Corporate Social Responsibility at les enphants Co. Ltd.