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.
Studios
Amy Reader
Amy Reader is a fiber and installation artist based in Portland, OR. Her primary interest is in using fibers and textiles to create sculptural forms. In 2015, Amy facilitated a large-scale, collaborative crochet installation that received international acclaim. In 2016, Amy traveled to Peru for an artist residency in the Amazon Rainforest where she built a permanent sculpture in the jungle. From 2016-2018, Amy was a Display Artist at Anthropologie where she created large scale installations and window displays. Currently, Amy splits her time between sewing her own artwork, teaching workshops, and writing educational blogs. Amy is a member of the Society for Embroidered Work - an international honor society promoting the best stitched art worldwide. She has been featured on local news segments like Wilson’s World on WCCB and on the art blog Brown Paper Bag.
Studios
Ariane Mariane
Ariane Mariane is a German fiber artist living and working in Paris. Trained in architecture and graphical textile design she felt in love with textile arts in 2004. Since 2008 she runs her own textile art studio, creating wall-hangings, sculptures, home decor, wearable art and accessories. In her work she combines graphical design and several textile techniques to make outstanding pieces in a fancy and playful style. She paints with powerful colored fibers and creates little stories in a poetic and humorous way. Each item is unique: created by hand, in a time-consuming and artistic process. In each piece Ariane Mariane explores new techniques, association of colors and materials. She describes her process as involuntary, deconstructed and messy. "My workshop is filled up with fabrics, wool fibers, pigments, papers and findings of all kind. It’s my kingdom from where I travel to imaginary countries, enjoy great adventures and often come back with marvelous treasuries. My best creations "just happen or as Picasso pointed out:"Inspiration exists but it must find you working."” In Ariane Mariane’s world, clothes and accessories stand side by side to wall hangings and sculptures. "I do not see any difference in making a garment or a picture," she explains. "My approach is always graphical and somehow storytelling: a combination of colors, shapes and materials. In the beginning“ making art for art seemed pretentious to me and I needed a function to authorize myself to create. Nowadays I play around with both. I may even feel freer when doing wall hangings and sculptures. On the other hand it’s so exciting to see a creation transformed by another human. I love the sparkling eyes when a woman tries out an art vest, a hat or accessory. Something’s happening –the art work and the woman are transformed.” The artist’s goal? Spread good vibes and color life.
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.
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.
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.
Businesses
Cargo
PURVEYORS OF CURIOUS OBJECTS Authentic, handmade and unique. We support small manufacturers, artists and local merchants.
Studios
Carolyn Hazel Drake
Carolyn Hazel Drake is a third-generation Oregonian who works with textiles, ceramics, and domestic materials. She references devotional objects and archetypal imagery to create objects and installations that are familiar yet cryptic. Drake studied literature & architecture at PSU’s Honors College and has an M.Ed. in art education. She has been awarded residencies at GLEAN, Leland Ironworks, Suttle Lodge, and Sitka. Her work is represented by Carnation Contemporary and Hanson Howard Gallery. Drake is an assistant professor of art education at Arizona State University. She divides her time between Phoenix and Portland. www.carolynhazeldrake.com / @carolynhazeldrake
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
Emily Pacheco
www.instagram.com/emilypoprocks
Emily Pacheco is a multi-disciplinary artist creating wearable art, soft sculpture, illustrations and papier-mache work. Her practice is a middle school love letter asking DIY, arts and crafts and outsider art if they'll go to prom.
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.
Studios
Heather Watkins
Heather Watkins’ work explores the nature and possibilities of the drawn line – materially and symbolically. Working with ink, cord, thread, cloth, and paper, she submits these materials to many cycles of saturation, compression, intertwining, and transference. Through these physical processes, she investigates phenomena such as flow, stasis, circulation, and gravity. Her work takes many forms: sculpture, drawing, text-based work, printmaking, and artist’s books.
Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions, at venues including: PDX CONTEMPORARY ART, Portland, OR; Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; Planthouse Gallery, New York, NY; the lumber room, Portland, OR; Front of House, Portland, OR; The Art Gym, Marylhurst, OR; and Nine Gallery, Portland, OR. Her work is held in private and public collections including the Portland Art Museum, the Miller Meigs Collection, the Regional Arts and Culture Council’s Portable Works Collection, the Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer, Portland State University, Reed College, and Rhode Island School of Design Artist’s Book Collection. She has been the recipient of grants from Oregon Arts Commission, The Ford Family Foundation, and Regional Arts & Culture Council, and has been awarded residencies at Caldera; Sitka Center for Art & Ecology; Oregon College of Art and Craft; and at Em Space Book Arts Center. Watkins holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, and is represented by PDX CONTEMPORARY ART.
Galleries
Helen's Costume
Helen's Costume is a contemporary art gallery in a modified domestic setting, in the Montavilla neighborhood of Portland OR.
Studios
Jeanne Medina Le
Jeanne received her BFA in Fiber and Material Studies (2001) and Post-Baccalaureate in Fashion, Body and Garment (2009) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and her MFA in Fiber (2013) from Cranbrook Academy of Art where she was awarded the Toby Devan Lewis Award. The award enabled her to pursue research in Antwerp, Belgium at the ModeMuseum (MoMu), and to work with fashion designer, Christian Wijnants. In 2018 she was awarded the Fountainhead Fellowship in Craft & Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). There she worked with the Highland Support Project and fair-trade weaving organization, Pixan, in Xela, Guatemala to develop textile designs with indigenous Mayan weavers. Her collaborations include a 2019 Bessie Award winning project with choreographer, Ni’Ja Whitson. She has been Artist-in-Residence at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Caldera, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and Pine Meadow Ranch. Jeanne served as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Fibers at Oregon College of Art and Craft (OCAC) in Portland, OR. Her exhibitions include Interpretive Center for Embodied Textiles solo-exhibition at the Alice Gallery in Seattle; GARB at ArtCenter Pasadena; International Fiber Art Fair in Seoul, Korea; Ancestral Offerings solo-exhibition at Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, VA; and Discursive at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum in Eugene, OR. Her work is in the permanent collection at Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, MI and the Oak Spring Garden Foundation Rachel “Bunny” Mellon Collection in Upperville, VA.
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.
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.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.
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.
Studios
Niky Kuzma
www.instagram.com/dirtysunshinepa
Niky moved to Portland to study Craft and Design at PNCA in August 2019, and finished her MFA in June 2021. She designs workshops to share her passion and belief that hand work positively impacts the maker and everyone should have an access point to the techniques. She identifies as differently abled resulting from a brain injury and experiences life through the lens of a low income individual. These are her motivators for designing free and inclusive workshops to invite a broader audience that may have felt discouraged to learn craft techniques due to cost or ability. Niky believes that we can create a stronger community through the act of making together in the same way our ancestors had. She wants to encourage folks to reconnect with their hands to discover an outlet for exploration, creativity, and a space for connecting with those who share our world.
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
Orquidia Violeta
Orquidia Violeta is a Salvadoran-American textile artist. Her art expands on traditional indigenous weaving with new techniques and current themes, using only salvaged materials and found objects. She incorporates sewing, embroidery and fiber-collage to tell stories about strong people transcending existential challenges. Her work shows how mythical heroines have found balance by following the guidance of the natural world.
cooperative embroidery fashion sculpture textile art wearable art
Businesses
Over & Over Style
Over & Over Style is the project of Barbara & Vivian, veterans of the Seattle apparel industry, with shared passions for textile artistry, history & travel, and the transformative power of clothing. In search of our next act, we came across a treasure trove of vintage kimonos (way too beautiful to be hidden away in moth balls) and decided to give them new life. The result, after hours upon countless hours of designing, deconstructing, washing, steaming, cutting & sewing, is a collection of unique home decor and one-of-a-kind garments in a dazzling array of patterns and colors.
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
Studios
Stashia Cabral
Stashia Cabral is a visual and performance artist from Portland, Oregon. She works in movement and traditional media such as sculpture, and painting, she has a passion for ready made and assemblages. Muchof her workincludes the use of saved family artifacts, including textiles, letters and photographs, and navigates the storeie (real and imagined) of her family's flight from Germany and their love (and hate) stories. Her performance pieces range from traditional belly dance, to butoh or burlesque and feature beautifully handmade costumes and props. Quirks and oddities are her happy place. Stashia has shown work at galleries and cafes locally, and performed at venues ranging from cafes and theaters to big stages, like the Northwest World Reggae Festival. Stashia received her MFA from Pacific Northwest College of 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.
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。