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.
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
Bea Fields
Bea Fields is a sewist who emigrated as a child with her family from Slovakia. She has a small archive of textiles, photographs, ceramics and other heirlooms she’s saved from her childhood and family members. Bea has shared these special items along with the history and culture of Slovakia in an educational workshop. In addition to celebrating her culture through cooking, baking and crafting, Bea also enjoys working in different art mediums by creating clothing, jewelry, bags and handmade gifts.
archive community sewing vintage textiles
Businesses Organizations
Black Earth United
Black Earth United, driven by the principles of Gawakazi, is a creative ecosystem reclaiming narratives, honoring ancestral wisdom, and forging a harmonious bond with nature worldwide. Through intergenerational and interdisciplinary collaborations, we illuminate the gaps in the outdoor industry's narrative, cultivating inclusivity and justice. We revere the sacredness of our land connections, steadfastly preserving their significance. Our clothing, our storytelling and our offerings interlace cultures, nurturing a profound kinship with nature. We raise consciousness about the historical quests for healing, community, resources, and salvation within the land's embrace. We unite diverse perspectives and dream of shaping a future where heritage and horizons harmoniously converge. Locally crafted clothing inspired by tradition, designed for harmony with nature. Nature's Embrace--A temporal community based artist residency spanning 6 generations coordinated by Black Earth United.
community fashion residency visual art
Organizations
Center for Contemporary Art & Culture (at PNCA)
The Center for Contemporary Art & Culture is a platform for cultural production including exhibition, lecture, performance, and publication. Housed within Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA), the Center throws open its doors to the greater public to foster conversation and community.
community gallery performance talks
Organizations
ELSO Inc
At ELSO, we provide culturally relevant STEAMED (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) education and leadership development opportunities that invite youth to Experience Life Science Outdoors. Our programs provide hands-on learning, mentorship, and career pathways. We aim to cultivate generations of innovators and problem solvers, fostering environmental literacy and scientific thinking from early childhood through young adulthood. ELSO is committed to creating a diverse future in STEAMED by providing opportunities and representation that inspire and empower.
classes community social justice workshops
Galleries
Gallery Go Go
Art, Boutique, Experiments & Workshops for the Community
community gallery textile art
Organizations
Gather:Make:Shelter
Gather:Make:Shelter is a new collaborative model of engagement, connecting people experiencing houselessness and poverty (PEHP) with collaborators in creative professional fields. The project builds relationships and ongoing partnerships with PEHP, fostering opportunities through teaching and leadership skill-building. Gather:Make:Shelter was founded in 2017 in Portland, Oregon to create consistent, authentic connections between people which recognize our shared humanity.
community
Organizations
Green Anchors PDX
Green Anchors is a center for community engagement through the arts, business, and ecology. Situated on a historical shipbuilding site along the Willamette River, our 7-acre property is a model for brownfield remediation through ecological restoration. We are a local business incubator, collaborative arts center, educational forum, and site for eco-innovation.
community sustainability
Studios
Ivy Stovall
Ivy Stovall delights in the abundance, patterns, and chaos of the natural world and of humanity. So it makes sense that three years into a Biology degree, she flipped majors and earned a BA in Interdisciplinary Humanities at the University of West Florida. Her broad education prepared her perfectly for her work in outdoor education, which she began as a 4H camp naturalist, teaching outdoor skills and elementary and middle school science curriculum in the field. Since then she has taught high and low ropes challenge courses, ESL at all grade levels, and developed a North Portland homeschool co-op and independent art, adventure, and theater camps for kids in her community. These days she lives and works at The MudHut Kulturhaus, her St. Johns urban permaculture homestead, where she shares her enthusiasm for outdoor living and hosts camps, workshops, skillshares, music and theater, women’s groups, and community celebrations and ritual. She likes to always be harvesting and keeps her hands busy making herbal medicines, homebrews and fermentations, botanical inks, dyes and pigments, wild foods, basketry, and natural building. Always a student and always a teacher, Ivy enjoys contributing to and learning from the passionate people of the Rewild Portland community. Many Rewild kids have learned fire and knife skills around The MudHut fire pit and know Ivy as the Echoes in Time kids’ camp coordinator. Ivy loves the creativity, curiosity, and wildness of young people and is dedicated to the work of building healthy intergenerational communities connected to and through the natural world. Nursery Director & Youth Program Instructor at Rewild Portland.
community natural dyes sustainability textile art workshops
Organizations
JCC Denver
The JCC Denver is a non-profit organization whose mission is to serve, strengthen, and inspire community guided by timeless Jewish values.
community
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.
classes community education textile traditions
Studios
Mo Geiger
Mo Geiger is an artist. Her work includes sculpture, performance, and experimentation, with a focus on interdisciplinary processes. Trained as a theatrical designer and technician, she values tactile learning in collaborative environments. Living material histories, scavenge, discard, and transformation connect all of her artwork and research. She develops projects using context-specific perspectives, which consider active and potentially overlooked elements wherever she is.
Mo’s artwork, research, and designs have appeared in public spaces, local organizations, galleries, theaters, and museums. In each of her projects, she uses de-centralized collective methods to make space for art in unconventional places. Recently, she received an MFA in Art and Social Practice from Portland State University, where she honed skills in collaboration and site-awareness. She makes work within a personal art practice and as a member of the south-central Pennsylvania performance collective Valley Traction.
community textile art textile history textile reuse
Organizations
Pacific Northwest Feltmakers Group
carlilekovacs.wixsite.com/pnwfeltmakers
We are a group of professional fiber artists located in Oregon and Washington. We primarily work in feltmaking, but enjoy other media as well. We formed to share experiences, to further our understanding and knowledge of felt making, to support one another in our creative endeavors and to act as a resource for others to help them learn this craft we love so much.
community felt
Organizations
Portland Japanese Garden
When His Excellency Nobuo Matsunaga, the former Ambassador of Japan to the United States, visited Portland Japanese Garden, he proclaimed it to be “the most beautiful and authentic Japanese garden in the world outside of Japan.” The Garden sits nestled in the hills of Portland, Oregon’s iconic Washington Park, overlooking the city and providing a tranquil, urban oasis for locals and travelers alike. Designed in 1963, it encompasses 12.5 acres with eight separate garden styles, and includes an authentic Japanese Tea House, meandering streams, intimate walkways, and a spectacular view of Mt. Hood. This is a place to discard worldly thoughts and concerns and see oneself as a small but integral part of the universe. Born out of a hope that the experience of peace can contribute to a long lasting peace. Born out of a belief in the power of cultural exchange. Born out of a belief in the excellence of craft, evidence in the Garden itself and the activities that come from it. Born out of a realization that all of these things are made more real and possible if we honor our connection to nature. Portland Japanese Garden is a place of inclusivity, anti-racism, and cultural understanding. As an organization created specifically to cultivate inner peace as well as peace between peoples and cultures, we have a responsibility to be a place where every single person in our community is welcome and where anyone can come to center themselves, reflect, and restore their spirit.
community performance talks workshops
Schools
Portland State University Textile Arts Program
The Textile Arts program provides a critical investigation of clothing and textiles with a focus on craft, sustainability, and community engagement. Students learn techniques in weaving, surface design, and sewn construction towards fashion, costume, and contemporary art.
community fashion sewing sustainability textile art textile design textile history weaving
Organizations
Rewild Portland
Rewild Portland is an environmental education focused non-profit organization serving Portland, Oregon and the surrounding wild and rural communities. Our mission is to create cultural and environmental resilience through the education of earth-based arts, traditions, and technologies. This mission comes to life in the form of educational workshops and programs, community-building events, and ecological restoration.
community sustainability workshops
Schools
Social Justice Sewing Academy
Founded in 2017, the Social Justice Sewing Academy (SJSA) is a non-profit organization that aims to empower individuals to utilize textile art for personal transformation, community cohesion, and to begin the journey toward becoming an agent of social change. Prior to COVID-19, youth workshops and programs were at the core of the organization.Through a series of hands-on workshops in schools, prisons, and community centers across the country, SJSA used social justice and art education to bridge artistic expression with activism. Many of our young artists made art that explored issues such as gender discrimination, mass incarceration, gun violence, and gentrification. The powerful imagery that youth created in cloth demonstrated their critique of issues plaguing their local and larger communities. These quilt blocks are then sent to volunteers around the world to embellish and embroider before being sewn together into quilts to be displayed in museums, galleries, and quilt shows across the country.
While youth programming remains at the heart of SJSA, the civil rights movement of 2020 and the concurrent COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted SJSA’s programming. Due to no longer being able to provide in-person programming and limited virtual youth workshops, SJSA launched a series of new initiatives to critically respond to the times. With each project, SJSA bridges the differences between age, race,and socioeconomic status to facilitate conversations about and encourage action toward social justice issues in households across the country.
community social justice textile art
Organizations
Stelo Arts and Culture Foundation
Stelo illuminates the power of art to invite conversation and build community. We are dedicated to responsive models of support via partnerships, collaboration, and exchange.
community gallery residency textile art
Organizations
The Hellenic-American Cultural Center & Museum
https://hellenicamericancc.org/
The Hellenic-American Cultural Center & Museum (HACCM) of Oregon and SW Washington was formed in 2007 by proud Greek-Americans who desired to preserve and celebrate their cultural heritage. The museum and cultural center focuses on educating Hellenic-Americans, philhellenes, and the broader public in their customs, traditions and history, and on preserving the Greek-American immigrant experience in Oregon and SW Washington.
community museum textile history vintage textiles visual art
Organizations
The Soul Restoration Center
www.thesoulrestorationcenter.com
The Soul Restoration Center is housed within the location of the former Albina Arts Center, which was established in the 1960s after Black youth advocated for a safe gathering space where they could take free creative arts, dance and music classes, taught by Black professionals. The building became a significant Black community hub until the 1970s. Several organizations occupied the building over the decades. Yet, it had been completely closed for about 16 months before it was temporarily reactivated by a few Black artists in late 2021 through January 30. In February 2022, I Am MORE signed a 2-year lease and transformed the neglected space into a healing-centered, arts-focused Black respite that collaborates with heart-centered individuals, donors, organizations and other partners who value Black lives.
community social
Studios
Vo Vo
Vo Vo (they/them) explores support strategies and models of community care within a post-traumatic social landscape, focusing on the resilience of BIPOC, LGBTQIA2S+ and disabled communities. They are editor of an internationally renowned publication, speaker, educator, curator, artist and musician who has exhibited and toured in Australia, Germany, Indonesia, The Netherlands, Singapore, Croatia, Mexico, Finland, Denmark, New Zealand, Vietnam, Sweden, Malaysia, and the States. In their transdisciplinary art, they work in textiles, embroidery, audio, video, weaving, and furniture building. Their installations seek to interrogate power dynamics, structural oppression, challenge histories and realities of imperialism, white supremacy and colonization.
community performance social justice visual art
Galleries
imperfecta
imperfecta is an art & design gallery focused on elevating women artists and underrepresented creatives. Our driving belief is that nothing is perfect and that imperfections are what makes humans human. Imperfecta collects, shares and offers art that reflects this belief as well as design artefacts and wondrous heirlooms that bring beauty wherever they go. As an art gallery, we love showcasing diverse fine art types - from visual art to sculptures, assemblages, interactive installations, conceptual art and art dolls. As a design space, our inventory includes jewelry, vessels, unique decorations, dinnerware and, occasionally, antique fabrics, furniture, and heirlooms. We also have a large collection of vintage art, design and photography books, which are available for purchase as well as reading in the comfort of our gallery. Due to the extensive number of books in the collection, not all are currently listed in our shop -- please contact us if you are looking for a specific title. In 2025 imperfecta launched Imperfecta Arts Collective - a program focused on elevating the arts in Oregon City and surrounding communities by focusing on three key goals: hosting engaging art events, offering art residencies, and providing professional workshops for artists.
community gallery residency visual art workshops