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.
Galleries
1122 Gallery
From 2018-2020, 1122 was in a backyard garage in the Montavilla neighborhood of Southeast Portland. As of May 2021, 1122 is an outdoor space in the Tabor neighborhood. 1122 is a community art gallery located in Portland, Oregon. It offers workshops, hosts events, and is open to collaborations of all kinds. It is inclusive, immersive, and aims to support people in the creative process. 1122 is a platform for all voices and stories and is committed to helping people generate art. We believe in responding to the world through creative acts, and support the community of makers, thinkers, dreamers, and imaginationists that make this happen. Jen Denrow and Lauren Wallig, creative humans and cousins, have been dreaming about creating a space like this for years.
Schools
Assembly | Gather + Create
Organizations
BASIC NEEDS food shelter clothing
foodshelterclothing.squarespace.com
BASIC NEEDS is about making things whose beauty is intertwined with their utility and sustainability. Sometimes it takes the form of a small collection of unique pieces, like hand felted sheepskins or botanically-dyed textiles, other times it may be a garden, designed and cared for over many years.
Businesses
BlackSheepMade
Alyssarhaye Graciano is a trilingual, POC fiber artist. Once in the tech industry as a linguistic specialist, she left her day job to pursue a creative career. While she mainly knits, crochet, macramé and weaving are also part of her everyday life.
She started BlackSheepMade as a way to fund an internship abroad while in college, but since 2014 it has evolved into large public installations, long-term pop-ups and traveling workshops. You can find her latest mural in her hometown of San Jose, California at The Berryessa Flea. She wove a 15 x 8–foot (4.5x 2.5–m) mural with her dad, Francisco, as an homage to her late abuelita and hometown culture.
In 2018, she ran a two-month long pop-up in downtown Portland via a city-funded program. She was able to test out her idea of a “deli for knits”: choose a style of beanie or scarf, pick your colors and she’ll knit it up in a week. In 2019, Travel Portland and My People’s Market brought Alyssarhaye to Japan to discuss life as an entrepreneur and teach a macrame workshop. In January of 2020, Alyssarhaye published her first DIY knitting book, Chunky Knits: Cozy Hats, Scarves and More Made Simple with Extra-Large Yarn.
Today, she continues her art career as a designer for various fiber brands and local businesses and she teaches fiber workshops in both English and Spanish. Alyssarhaye now lives in San Jose, California where when she’s not knitting, can be found sewing, cycling, or on a hike.
Galleries
Blackfish Gallery
Combining a mentor-based approach with an exceptional visiting artists program, students work one-on-one with nationally and internationally recognized designers, makers, and scholars in a self-directed curriculum that challenges them to bring to life the full strength of their ideas and skills.
Galleries
Elizabeth Leach Gallery
Established in 1981, the Elizabeth Leach Gallery presents prominent Northwest and internationally established artists working in a wide variety of contemporary media. The gallery's mission is to create a dynamic dialogue between the local community and the global art world.
Studios
Felicia Murray
Felicia Murray is a fiber artist from Maine, who now lives and works out of her studio at NW Marine Artworks in Portland, Oregon. Her tactile work explores motifs from nature, while creating imagined landscapes of color and texture. She received her B.F.A. in Fibers from The Savannah College of Art and Design in 2019, and has since been continuing to develop her work through collaborations, commissions, community projects, and exhibitions. She has created large-scale fiber art for clients worldwide, and has worked with brands such as NIKE, Gallagher Designs, SCAD, and Wieden and Kennedy.
Galleries
Fuller Rosen Gallery
Fuller Rosen Gallery was founded in 2018 by artists EM Fuller (she/her) and BriAnna Rosen (she/her) as a collaborative curatorial project. The gallery exhibits regional, national, and international emerging artists who address urgent, contemporary issues.
Galleries
HOLDING Contemporary
HOLDING Contemporary presents exhibitions and programs by emerging and established visual artists across disciplines. Through a deliberate curatorial vision and a strategic business model, we position ourselves towards challenging the economical and social privilege of the art world.
Galleries
Helen's Costume
Helen's Costume is a contemporary art gallery in a modified domestic setting, in the Montavilla neighborhood of Portland OR.
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.
Studios
LeBrie Rich
LeBrie Rich has been exploring the visual possibilities and emotional resonance of felted wool since 2004. She is best known for updating the traditional crafts of felting and embroidery by creating highly detailed soft-sculptural replicas of familiar packaged food items, such as Jif peanut butter and Spam. Venues that have shown her work include the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Project Space in New York, NY; Portland Art Museum and Blackfish Gallery in Portland, OR; and Albus Gallery in Fukuoka, Japan. She has been awarded artist residencies at the Rauschenberg Residency (2013, 2015), Ucross Foundation (2018), and Kayamori House (2012) in the mountains outside of Nara, Japan.
Rich loves to teach people to access their creativity through felting. In 2021 she taught the art of felting to a total of 800 students from across the world, both through online and in-person classes. Her felt sculptures, collages, wearable fiber creations, and workshops for youth have been written about in the New York Times, Hand/Eye Magazine, Make, the Oregonian, and Portland Monthly.
Galleries
Lumber Room
The lumber room is a space for contemporary art in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 2010, it is dedicated to an ever evolving approach to the exhibition and discussion of emerging as well as established artists and their work.
Galleries
MK Gallery
The Art Building at Portland State University is home to the MK Galleries.
MK Gallery brings world-class exhibitions and events together with pioneering learning and community programmes to Milton Keynes.
An independent café and shop, cinema from Curzon, and spectacular views over the park feature in this new building, which launched in 2019. Three major exhibitions are presented each year across five elegant and spacious galleries, from thematic group exhibitions to in-depth solo presentations. Alongside our exhibitions, we offer music, dance, talks and conferences, mixing emerging and locally based talent with established names. We also deliver a weekly film programme featuring the best of independent cinema in partnership with Curzon. We offer schools and family activities throughout the year and our artist-designed play area is open 365 days a year.Galleries
Nationale
Nationale is an art space established in 2008 by Owner/Director, May Barruel. Nationale is dedicated to the promotion of culture through exhibitions, performances, and a selection of carefully chosen goods.
Galleries
Nine Gallery
https://www.blueskygallery.org/nine-gallery
Nine Gallery was founded in 1987 by nine artists interested in working periodically outside the context of the commercial gallery. It is an artist-run cooperative and is administratively and financially independent from Blue Sky, funded solely by its members. Each member of Nine Gallery is in charge of the gallery for one month each year. Usually members show their own work, however, they are also welcome to curate shows of other artists’ work. Periodically the members of Nine Gallery, present work together in group exhibitions, and at other times they collectively invite other artists to show. Beyond the general interest in creating a largely non-commercial exhibition environment with a minimum of bureaucratic and institutional structure, the members of Nine Gallery have no collective ideological program or philosophy.
Studios
Opulent Fibers
Opulent Fibers is a studio operated by felt artist Kristi Kún. Kristy Kún is a studio artist working in hand made wool felt with an innovative approach to construction methods, material combinations, and craftsmanship. Kristy believes strongly in collaboration and community building through Craft and has hosted local and international instructors, each experts their practicing form of textile art, and has presented at free community events, demonstrating techniques and sharing her passion for wool.
Businesses
PenFelt Studio
PenFelt Studio provides delightful, original projects and high-quality materials for felters who appreciate consciously-sourced materials, good design and a sense of fun.
Founded in 2004 by artist and felting instructor LeBrie Rich. Known to some as Duchess of Felt, LeBrie is best known for her highly realistic sculptures of food packaging rendered in felt.
LeBrie has taught workshops at colleges, art studios, and fiber festivals all over the world—from a small village in the mountains of Japan to New York City. In addition to custom work for private clients, LeBrie has worked with Bent Image Lab, Nike, and a sustainable diaper manufacturer who needed a presentation box made out of felt for Kate Middleton (the Duchess of Cambridge). She lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
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.