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
Adriene Cruz
Harlem native Adriene Cruz was deeply inspired by her mothers creative use of color and the rich cultural influences of her childhood community.
Adriene attended the High School of Art and Design and received a BFA from the School of Visual Art in NewYork. After relocating to Portland, Oregon she explored quilting at the Oregon School of Art and Craft. What emerged were brilliantly colored and adorned quilts, large and small, piecing together richly patterned materials in rhythmic arrangements, structured as well as improvisational, deeply moving on a spiritual level and simply enjoyable for their sheer beauty. Fabric, cowrie shells, mirrors, sequins, beads , tribal silver, even beetle wings and fragrant herbs are among the endless adornments and amulets in Adriene's artistic alchemy.
Adriene's creative vision garnered invitations to create public art in her Portland community. Often engaging community youth, Adriene created street banners, murals, decorative trash bins and a billboard. Public artist Valerie Otani invited Adriene to design one of Portland's Light Rail stations. The artists collaborated creating colorful glass mosaic, handmade tiles, steel railings and concrete benches reflecting Ashanti culture. "Stone quilts" embedded in the paving also adorn the platform of Killingsworth Station.
Adriene has exhibted internationally in Brazil, Costa Rica and South Africa. Nationally her work has exhibited at the Smithsonian in D.C., The Folk Art Museum, NY, American Craft Museum , NY, Museum of Biblical Art, NY, The Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, The National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, and the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA. to name a few. Collections include the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, Hartsfield International Airport, Atlanta GA, Haborview Medical Center, Seattle, Portland Community College and numerous private collections.
Organizations
Babaran Segaragunung Culture House
Babaran Segaragunung Culture House (BSG) is a non-profit arts organization located in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The mission of BSG is to explore cultural traditions of Indonesia and the world in order to gain a greater understanding of the application of the rich cultural heritage of indigenous cultures in this era. BSG facilitates educational programs teaching the ancient creative process of Nusantara, collaboration and cultural exchange, publications, exhibitions, cultural tours, workshops, as well as documentation of creative process. Serving artists, artisans, cultural lovers, both locally and abroad, BSG intends to increase the creativity and interconnections of all aspects of Indonesian art.
community textile design textile history textile printing textile traditions
Studios
Bardsley Handwoven
Jessica Bardsley is a weaver and textile artist living in Portland, Oregon. Primarily self-taught, Jessica is interested in exploring weaving and other textiles as a way to connect to culture, history, and heritage, and using it as an avenue to build community and connections across generations.
Studios
Bautista Weaving
Francisco Bautista is a fourth generation Master Weaver in his family. He and his wife Laura were born in Teotitlán del Valle, a Zapotec village in Oaxaca, Mexico; they have always been fascinated by the infinite possibilities of crossing threads. They use only hand-spun, hand dyed wool, and weave each of their works on a foot pedal loom. The vibrant colors you see in their weavings come from their own natural and aniline dyes. Together they work to ensure that the quality achieved by the Master Weavers of old will continue to live on in each piece they weave.
Businesses
Kat + Maouche
Katen Bush is the co-owner of Kat + Maouche, a gallery specializing in vintage Moroccan rugs. She and her husband, Latif, focus on research and provenance.
Organizations
Ko Falen Cultural Center
Ko-Falen Cultural Center, located in Bamako, Mali and Portland, Oregon is the inspiration of Baba Wagué Diakité, a Malian artist and writer now living in Portland. It has been his dream to share the culture of his homeland with the people of his adopted home. In Bambara, the word ko-falen means “gift exchange.” Ko-Falen Cultural Center seeks to promote cultural, artistic and educational exchanges between the people of the United States and Mali through art and educational programs. We believe that a greater understanding and respect between people can be reached through these personal exchanges.
Studios
Lehuauakea
Lehuauakea is a māhū mixed-Native Hawaiian interdisciplinary artist and kapa maker from Pāpaʻikou on Moku O Keawe, the Big Island of Hawaiʻi. Lehua’s Kānaka Maoli family descends from several lineages connected to Maui, Kauaʻi, Kohala, and Hāmākua where their family resides to this day.
Through a range of traditional Kanaka Maoli craft-based media, their art serves as a means of exploring cultural and biological ecologies, Indigenous identity, and contemporary environmental degradation. With a particular focus on the labor-intensive making of ʻohe kāpala (carved bamboo printing tools), kapa (bark cloth), and natural pigments, Lehua is able to breathe new life into patterns and traditions practiced for generations. Through these acts of resilience that help forge deeper relationships with ʻāina, this mode of Indigenous storytelling is carried well into the future.
They have participated in several solo and group shows around the Pacific Ocean, and recently opened their first curatorial research project, DISplace, at the Five Oaks Museum in Portland, Oregon. The artist is currently based between New Mexico and Pāpaʻikou after earning their Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting with a minor in Art + Ecology at Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Businesses
Parker Simonne Designs. Inc.
parker + simonne designs is a woman-owned small batch clothing line modernized kimonos, tops and tunics, inspired by my dreams.
Studios
Terumi Saito
The Japanese textile tradition dates back to the Yayoi period (300 BCE - 300 CE) where the primitive yet ubiquitous backstrap loom weaving method was employed in the Japanese regions. In her own art practice, Terumi Saito explores the spiritual and existential by way of employing these traditional and ancient techniques; techniques which involve rudimentary modes of textile production including the mechanisms constructed only from sticks and yarn. Despite this, her complex textile work still involves particular care and detail in every part of the extensive process including weaving, dyeing, and coiling.
From 2019 to 2021, Saito traveled to Peru, Guatemala and Japan conducting research in these countries' respective indigenous textile traditions whose weaving and natural dyeing techniques she employs in her practice today. The synthesis of this research now embodies an art process which aims to not only produce a contemporary hybrid craft derived from these traditions but to also preserve and honor its extraordinary significance.齊藤輝美
静岡県生まれ。2016年多摩美術大学グラフィックデザイン学科卒業。2020年パーソンズ美術大学大学院テキスタイル専攻修士課程修了。大学院在学時にペルー、グアテマラにて染織技術の研究調査を行う。腰機織りや草木染めなどの技法を使った自身の作品を通して伝統的な手仕事のものづくりを伝えると共に伝統と異文化を融合したハイブリッドクラフトアートを創作している。現在はニューヨークを拠点にアーティスト、デザイナーとしてファイバーアート、ペインティング、グラフィックデザインと多岐にわたる分野で制作活動に従事している。
Businesses
Textile Hive
Textile Hive, based in Portland OR, is home to the 40,000 textiles of the Andrea Aranow Textile Design Collection. The collection is the largest fully digitized independent textile collection in the world. Through its membership program the visual database offers access to educational institutions, design professionals and textile enthusiasts. Textile Hive’s mission is to preserve and enable greater access to the rich history, intricate techniques, and stunning visual beauty of the textile collection through immersive physical and digital experiences.
archive textile design textile traditions tours vintage textiles
Schools
Variegated Places
Cydni Carter Lopez is a place-based artist and designer based in SE Portland. Recently graduated with her MFA in Applied Craft & Design from the Pacific Northwest College of Art, Cydni has a passion for working with her hands and the slow processes that come with traditional craft work. Raised in the Pacific Northwest Cydni comes alive in nature; it is where she feels most grounded and finds infinite joys and curiosities. Her work uses the crafts of natural dyeing and foraging as methods of connecting deeper with the self and the world that we inhabit. Deepening connections between people and place Variegated Places invites you to reimagine the potential of our interconnected worlds through a color based collaboration with a plant. The website serves as a place based color catalogue and growing educational resource including instructions, demonstrations, material resource lists, and someday lesson plans designed to facilitate interconnection between our human selves and the places, spaces, and worlds all around us.