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
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.
Studios
Ali Cat Leeds
Ali Cat. is an artist and print maker living on unceded Cowlitz, Multnomah and Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde land at the confluence of two rivers, also know as Portland, Oregon. She produces her work under the name Entangled Roots Press. Her prints mingle the literal and metaphorical to illuminate and comment upon the world around us. Relief, screen, and letterpress prints span from the carnage of clear-cuts to the beauty of peoples movements. Ali’s prints pull from ancestral herstories and push towards liberatory futures; entangling lessons from gardens, symbols in coffee cups, woven threads from Armenia and Euskal Herria, to the printed page. Ali received her BFA at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland. She completed an artist-residency at Proyecto’ace in Buenos Aires in 2014, and was a member of Flight 64, a member-run, nonprofit print studio, from 2015- 2018. Ali worked as the Print Studio Technician at PNCA from 2017 – 2021. They now teach and volunteer at the Independent Publishing Resource Center.
Studios
Alison Heryer
Alison Heryer is an interdisciplinary artist whose work combines costume, installation, performance, and community engagement. As a costume designer, she is a member of United Scenic Artists, Local 829. Her design credits include productions at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, 59E59 Theaters, La MaMa, The New Victory Theater, Portland Center Stage, Portland Opera, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Artists Repertory Theatre, ZACH Theatre, The Hypocrites, and Redmoon. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, World Stage Design, and The Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space. Awards include a RACC Build Grant, Drammy Award and Austin Critics Table Award for Costume Design, and the ArtsKC Inspiration Grant. Heryer is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Texas at Austin. She is a faculty member at Portland State University where she was recently granted the Sue Horn-Caskey & Charles F. Caskey Professorship of Textile Arts & Costume Design. Alison Heryer’s 2021/2022 projects have been generously supported by a RACC Build Grant.
Studios
Amirra Malak
Amirra Malak is an Egyptian American artist living in Oregon while also inhabiting spaces between cultures, countries, geographies, and identities. She feels most at home in liminal spaces, especially in the natural world and is interested in using light, pattern, movement, time, sound, and visual sensation to create meditative healing experiences. Work includes drawing, painting, textiles, meditative video, interactive and immersive video installations, and curated online spaces. She is currently exploring bridging past and future through the combination of ancient craft and modern technologies in video and textile installations inspired by Egyptian Khayamiya tent applique.
Amirra shares her belief that humans are makers and creators by nature with her two children and her high school students in Hood River where she has been an art teacher for twenty years. She strives to create equity and access to college level art curriculum for all students through building and maintaining an inclusive AP art program at Hood River Valley High School and serving on the Hood River County School District Equity Committee. She also served on both the Arts Academic Advisory Committee and the Advanced Placement Art & Design Development Committee for the College Board. She was awarded the College Board Regional Award for Excellence and Innovation in the Arts for her equity work within the AP Art & Design program.
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
Anne Greenwood-Rioseco
Anne Greenwood-Rioseco (b. Jamestown, North Dakota, 1967) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores themes of time, spirituality and the transcendent genius of the natural world. Collaboration, vibrant color and fostering relationships are the common threads in her social art practice that spans textiles, plants and poetry. She has worked as a residential gardener in Portland tending to small gardens across the city for 25 years. In 1989 she co-founded the Albina Green in North Portland and for over ten years collaborated in Ariadne Community Supported Agriculture Garden. In 2018 she was introduced to the TC2 Digital Jacquard loom at the Icelandic Textile Center, and in 2022 she was invited to return to weave 10 yards of textile. This work will be featured in the 2023 international exhibition Threads | Þræðir Intertwined in Iceland: Textiles & Book Arts at Nordia House NW in Portland and this will be a featured exhibit, artists talk and workshop with Portland Textile Month. This exhibit will feature twelve artists brought together by the Icelandic Textiles Center and includes new work in collaboration with Arnþrúður Ösp Karlsdóttir. Anne incorporates photography, natural dyes, hand-work, book making, writing, and installation in her creative practice. She has collaborated with her husband Mauricio Rioseco Milano as artists in residence, installation exhibits, writing prose & making images for Vestiges & Shapes of Land artists’ books. Mauricio (b. Rosario, Argentina, 1965) is a first generation Argentine who has worked as a woodworker for 25 years in Portland. Siblings Anne and Tom Greenwood started an ongoing community project called Ray-mains Blanket Company in 2019. The two worked with the Portland Garment Factory over the summer and fall to make an edition of 44 repurposed wool blankets to help fund the Albina Green 20th Year Celebration in North Portland. Anne has worked with Caldera and Arts Education in the Gorge teaching in both urban and rural schools. She co-curated VOLUME 4 of the PNW version of Class Set with Bay Area artist Jessalyn Aaland. Class Set provides K-12 teachers with free artist-designed, Risograph-printed posters for their classrooms featuring quotes by authors and activists. Anne’s work has been collected by the Plains Art Museum in ND, the Bainbridge Island Art Museum, many special collections libraries, rare book rooms, and private collections. Her work is sold by David Abel at Passages Books in Portland, OR, Erin Michelson at 23 Sandy in Santa Fe, NM, and Fran Durako of Kelmscott Book Sellers in Baltimore, MA. The OAC, the PICA, RACC, the Hallie Ford Foundation, the Multnomah County Cultural Coalition, and the North Dakota Council for the Arts have all financially supported her projects. Greenwood Rioseco has been an artist in residence at Portland State University Textile Arts, Playa (Summer Lake, Or.), Caldera (Sisters, Or.), Signal Fire (Or.), and Pine Meadow Ranch (Sisters, Or.).
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
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.
Studios
Blue McCall
Blue is a trans-disciplinary artist originally from Southern Appalachia, currently based in Portland, OR. They make fantasy-industrial cast sculpture, dance, textiles, and paintings. They choreograph for hyperpop and metal musicians, most recently directing a video for Jan Julius' album Meat Shot Idyllic. They are currently writing an experimental multimedia novella set in a factory about sex, labor, and revolt.
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
Studios
Charlie Wilcox
Based in Portland, Oregon, with roots in small town Minnesota, Charlie Wilcox is a designer, embroiderist, filmmaker, writer, and tubist. In combining these practices, he uses the constraints of a hand-embroidery approach to examine the possibilities and test the limits of stop-motion animation. The first gallery show of his work took place in May 2022 at Dorsa Brevia Art Gallery in Portland, with shows at the Hallberg Center for the Arts in Wyoming, MN and PLACE Studios in Portland, OR, following. He spends business hours at Reed College as an Administrative Coordinator (and de facto Graphic Designer) for the performing arts departments and is working towards a Master’s Degree in Design Systems from the Pacific Northwest College of Art. When he’s not doing all that, he’s probably trying out different punch recipes for his friends.
Studios
Charlotte Flory
https://www.instagram.com/morepatternmorebetter/?hl=en
Charlotte Flory is an artist and design director living in Portland, Oregon. She comes by way of New York City, where she lived for 21 years after graduating from Parsons School of Design. Her fashion and home accessory designs sold in eponymous NYC shops such as Barneys New York, Bergdorf Goodman and ABC Carpet & Home, while a piece she designed for Louise Bourgeois hangs in MoMA, signed in red stitches “LB”. Her textile work has walked the runway for Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, and more. Working for Master Printmakers to edition hand pulled etchings of Sean Scully and Phillip Pearlstein, and learning Letterpress Printing from the grandson of Alexander Calder, her true passion for approaching design as art has offered her a lifetime of fulfilling work. “More Pattern More Better” has been her moniker for some time now, and as a Decorative Expressionist, color, pattern and especially the mix of them, is her favorite way to amplify beauty and inspire joy. Please visit her Instagram page for more @charlotteflory
Organizations
Columbia FiberArts Guild
www.columbiafiberartsguild.org
Columbia FiberArts Guild is a vibrant group of textile artists celebrating their 50th anniversary this year. Our guild provides a network and forum encompassing ALL aspects of fiber art, including art quilting, surface design, sculptural, and wearable art. Fiber artists of all abilities are welcome. Established in 1969 as the Columbia Stitchery Guild, the Columbia FiberArts Guild serves the greater Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington areas.
Organizations
Conservation through Poverty Alleviation (www.cpali.org) and SEPALI Madagascar
At CPALI, we work with rural farmers to develop sustainable livelihoods that support both people and ecosystems. In our approach, we focus on existing resources, local leadership, community ownership and linking partners to global markets.
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.
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.
Studios
Francesca Capone
Francesca Capone is a materials designer, visual artist, writer, and educator. Her work is primarily concerned with the creation of materials and a poetic consideration of their meaning. She is interested in how tactile forms simultaneously serve as functional surfaces for daily life and as a mode of communication or symbol within the cultural paradigm. Her books Woven Places (Some Other Books, 2018), Text means Tissue (2017), and Weaving Language (information as material 2018, Self Published 2015) focus on textile poetics. They are available for purchase via Printed Matter, and are available for viewing at the MoMA Library and the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has exhibited at Whitechapel Gallery in London, LUMA/Westbau in Switzerland, Textile Arts Center in NYC, and 99¢ Plus Gallery in Brooklyn. She has been an artist in residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and Andrea Zittel's A-Z West. Her academic work includes lectures and workshops at Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, Reed College, University of Washington, and Alberta College of Art and Design, among others.
Studios
Fringe Benefits Weaving
Megan Rothstein is a weaver, explorer of natural dyes, restorer of looms and general fiber artist. In her production weaving practice she forages natural dyes from the Portland landscape in order to dye natural fibers. After the dying process she weaves shawls and scarves with a focus on twill weave structures which she sells at craft sales through out Oregon. One of her woven naturally dyed shawls recently won the award of “Grand Champion” in the weaving division at the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival and her handspun blanket received a first place ribbon at the Black Sheep festival. Her fine art weaving practice focuses on re-using materials from her production weaving process and upcycling synthetic fibers into hanging tapestries. Megan is also an Ikebana (Japanese floral art) artist. She holds a 3rd grade teaching certificate with the Sogetsu school of Ikebana. She focuses on teaching workshops to those interested in incorporating the concepts of Ikebana to their fine arts practice and ongoing classes to gardeners interested in using the gardens to create Ikebana. Her Ikebana practice focuses on found plant material, rather than relying on flower shops, and re-using materials such as cardboard, plastic pieces and other discarded materials. She teaches classes throughout the Portland area and has done several demonstrations at the Portland Japanese Garden. She also holds a masters degree in folklore and has done research on roadside memorials and multimodal communication in 911 call centers. In addition she has a collaborative installation practice focused on re-used materials with Adam Rothstein. She also co-runs Weird Shift an ongoing project, twice funded by the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art’s precipice fund, with Adam Rothstein and Carl Diehl.
Location Details
6635 N Baltimore AvenueUnit 219
Portland, Oregon 97203
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.
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.
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.
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
Hyun Jung Jung
Hyun Jung Jung is a Korean artist and designer currently based in Portland, Oregon with a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Hyun Jung’s artistic practice centers around creating interactive and immersive experiences for her audience, resulting in various outcomes across different forms and mediums. Inspired by personal experiences and Pop culture, she aims to capture the generation she lives in and create work that is relatable to people from different backgrounds and cultures. Hyun Jung plans to continue creating works that capture the generation that she lives, and to fuel meaningful dialogues.
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.
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
Jo Hamilton
Jo Hamilton’s crocheted portraiture and landscape works are a fascinating combination of traditional technique with contemporary subject matter. A native of Scotland, Hamilton earned a degree in painting and drawing from the Glasgow School of Art, but after moving to Portland, she translated her artistic vision into the medium of crochet, which she had first learned as a child from her grandmother. Her work is included in the collections of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene; Portland Community College and the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; and the City of Seattle, among others.
Studios
Judilee Fitzhugh
Judilee Fitzhugh is a textile artisan who specializes in natural plant dyes and couture sewing. A tour of duty in Japan with the U.S. Navy led to a profound Japanese influence and a lifelong affection for indigo and plant fibers. She gained her Certificate in Craft at the Oregon College of Art and Craft in 2002, and taught in the BFA and Studio School programs until the school’s closure in 2019. Her finely crafted work combines natural objects with vintage fabric remnants, hand weaving, and surface design to portray a single moment in history.
Studios
Kindra Crick
Kindra Crick is a multimedia artist who gives visual expression to the wonder and process of scientific inquiry. In her experiential installations and layered mixed-media work she incorporates drawings, diagrams, maps, and imagery from under the microscope. She is fascinated by the human brain - our complex machine - which can fathom the beginning of time and the nature of its own thought. Crick has a degree in Molecular Biology from Princeton University and a Certificate in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been influenced by the inspired marriage of her grandparents, the artist Odile Crick and the scientist Francis Crick. Noted exhibitions include: Christie’s, The Phillips Collection, the New York Hall of Science, Littman Gallery, and MDI Biological Laboratory. Her artwork is included in the LMB collection in Cambridge, England, the Gordon Gilkey Print Center at the Portland Art Museum and the Jordan Schnitzer Collection. Her work has been featured in HuffPost, PBS NewsHour CANVAS, Science Magazine, and Oregon Art Beat. She is on the board of NW Noggin, an arts-integrated neuroscience outreach organization and has given talks about the intersection of art and science at Princeton University, Lewis and Clark College, University of Wisconsin, and the Portland Art Museum.
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
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.
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.
Studios
Limei Lai
Limei Lai enjoys working with paint, fabric and clay. She is curious about how memories and experience work with objects to create cultural value and aesthetic value in spaces, thus addressing and commenting past and present to encourage good changes. Her interactive community engagement installation focuses on creating spaces and voices for intergenerational communication. Art as an experience not only visually critiques, questions, reflects, but also celebrates. Limei is the artist member at Blackfish Gallery. She was the founder and curator of Playground Gallery and the vice-president of Oregon Chinese Artist Association. Her works were shown in Local 14 Art Show, The Arts Center at Corvallis, Ashland Fiber Arts Collective, Newport Visual Arts Center, Paragon Gallery, Lansu Garden, The Place, PNCA, Red E Cafe Gallery, Playground Gallery. Her murals were in north Portland and Chinatown Portland.
Studios
Loo Bain
Loo is a multimedia artist investigating ideas of history, material, earth science, and self. She has received artist grants, most recently the Oregon Arts Commission, shown nationally in galleries, acquired private commissions, and participated in artist residencies including Arrowmont, Pine Meadow Ranch, Playa, the Icelandic Textile Center and most recently Portland State University. She has assisted and collaborated with many artists, including Michael Rackowitz, Lead Pencil Projects, Pepone Osario, Lisa Yuskavage and Ebony Patterson. She loves living in Portland where she continues to make and show work.
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
Maren Jensen
Maren Jensen is an artist living and working in her hometown of Portland, Oregon. Working with concepts of mutual concrete and un- concreteness, the conceptual vs. impactful realities of an idea, and wading through imperceptibility, she uses tapestry weaving, ceramics, drawing and text to study these themes. She recently received a grant from RACC, has been in residence at Dirt Palace in Providence, RI, A-Z West in Joshua Tree, CA and will be attending the MassMOCA residency this fall.
Studios
Michelle Freedman
https://stitchwellandprosper.com
Michelle Freedman is a Portland, Oregon based designer, teacher, and maker. Her recent quilt designs have been published in Quiltmaker, Fons & Porter’s Quick + Easy Quilts, and McCall’s Quilting and have been featured in the Quilting Daily Quilted Jacket Workshop and the cover of Sew News magazine. On weekdays she designs quilts and works as the marketing, graphic design, and website manager for Maywood Studio. When she isn’t sewing or drawing, you can find her tending to her dye garden or writing that mystery novel she hopes to publish one day. Michelle has a BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons School of Design. She co-authored the Book How the West Was Worn which accompanied an exhibit of the same name at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage. She loves to combine her love of fashion and textile history in her quilt designs. Find her online at stitchwellandprosper.com
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
Studios
Pablo V. Cazares
Pablo V. Cazares is an interdisciplinary artist in Portland, Oregon. His work has been shown at the Parallax Art Center, Afru Gallery, Portland State University’s MK Gallery, and Western Oregon University's Cannon Gallery. In 2023, he was nominated for the International Sculpture Center's Outstanding Student Work Award, awarded the McGlasson Prize for Textile Arts, and received a jury commendation from the Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts Prize. In 2023, he was also awarded the Visionary Award at InventOregon for his work with kombucha biotextiles. He was awarded an artist’s residency at the Lookout Arts Quarry in April 2022. Community work features largely in his practice. In 2021 he created The t4t Art Collective to provide transgender artists an opportunity to show work and build community which he now curates and facilitates. In 2021 he also became a mentor-designer for high school students through the SHIFT Project with Arts for Learning NW (formerly Young Audiences). Pablo holds a B.S. in Art Practice from Portland State University, as well as an associates degree in Apparel Design. Contact him at PabloVCazares@gmail.com
Schools
Pacific Northwest College of Art Applied Craft + Design MFA Program
pnca.willamette.edu/academics/graduate/acd
Connecting design thinking to design doing, the MFA in Applied Craft + Design program is grounded in hands-on making, entrepreneurial strategies, and social and environmental engagement.
With a curriculum focused on the development of a strong artistic voice, the realization of work for a specific community or client, and entrepreneurism that connects making a living with making a difference, the MFA in Applied Craft and Design is the only graduate program of its kind.
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.
Encouraging a cross-disciplinary studio environment in which the workshop is a lab to collaboratively explore design and making processes, the mentor-based MFA in Applied Craft and Design welcomes students from a wide range of creative backgrounds to make original work with an applied purpose.
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.
Studios
Peggy Biskar
Peggy Biskar is a contemporary artist living and working in Manzanita. Trained as a painter, she now interprets her perspective through pieced textiles.
Organizations
Portland Handweavers Guild
www.portlandhandweaversguild.org
The Portland Handweavers Guild (PHG) has promoted excellence in handweaving, spinning and other fiber arts for over 75 years.
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
Portland TextileX Month
The Portland TextileX Month Festival was founded and organized to foster cross-pollination among textile enthusiasts, artists, businesses, schools, and cultural organizations. We create programming and provide an open platform to share histories, knowledge, commerce, experiences, and practices, across cultures and generations. We seek to partner with facilitators and organizations, rooted in community building, sharing, accessibility, inclusivity, diversity, and collaboration. By creating and fostering textile programming that champions grassroots collaboration and dialogue, we create meaningful opportunities for change.
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.
Studios
Shu-Ju Wang
Born and raised in Taiwan, Shu-Ju Wang is a painter and book artist now based in Portland. Through careful research and community outreach, her art practice is a path to gain deeper understanding of the world and our relationship to each other—the land, the water, and all the beings that call this place home—our experiences and transformations form a complex tapestry of shared interests and conflicts. While her work is largely focused on the radical and sometimes catastrophic shifts of our lives, she find tenderness in our efforts to continue life on this planet, hope in our willingness to work together, and humor in our flaws.
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.
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
Studio Abioto
https://www.studioabioto.com/midnight-seed
Midnight Seed is a muse, a consummate lover, an oracle, a mystic, and a mother of five goddesses. Her tools are culinary arts, wordsmithing, spirit law, and storyteller. For over thirty years, she practiced human rights law throughout the byways and highways of Mississippi. She is a culinary evolutionary storyteller "Green Lady" and she has brought her southern roots to vegan and vegan sun foods from the south to the northwest. Combining writing, theatre, law, and spirit; she has been led in the spirit to create "Holy Mojo", a spiritual interactive theatre, "Legal Oracle", a publishing company engaged in the interpretation of world issues from a cultural metaphysical perspective as it impacts people of color, " O'zeal Inspirational Spa", a spirit healing modality, "Midnight Seed" a mystical apothecary and "Green Lady" a living light food vegan cafe. She is a queen mother of five women who have brought their extraordinary qualities to the earth and for this, she is most grateful. She is a consummate lover of life evolving and bursting boundaries of preconceived dogma and for that, she is most blessed.
Studios
Tali Weinberg
In Weinberg’s most recent weaving and sculpture, she explores connections between life-sustaining circulatory systems both internal and external to the human body—from lungs and arteries to forests and watersheds. Transforming tourniquets into tree rings; coiling color-coded climate data around medical tubing; and weaving trees out of plastic into lung-like forms, Tali responds to intertwined climate and health crises. Weinberg’s work is held in public and private collections and is exhibited internationally including at the Griffith Art Museum, 21C Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, University of Colorado Art Museum, Georgia Museum of Art, Center for Craft, and Form & Concept gallery. She has been featured in the New York Times, onEarth Magazine, Surface Design Journal, Fiber Art Now, and Ecotone. Honors include a Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Serenbe Fellowship, Windgate Fellowship to Vermont Studio Center, Lia Cook Jacquard Residency, SciArt Bridge Residency for cross-disciplinary collaboration, and a virtual residency at New York’s Museum of Art and Design, among others. She has taught at California College of the Arts (CCA) and Penland School of Craft and is currently a 2022 Illinois Artist Fellow.
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。
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.
Studios
Tiny Pricks Project
www.instagram.com/tinypricksproject
Tiny Pricks is a public art project created and curated by Diana Weymar. Contributors from around the world are stitching Donald Trump’s words into textiles, creating the material record of his presidency and of the movement against it. Tiny Pricks Project holds a creative space in a tumultuous political climate. The collection counterbalances the impermanence of Twitter and other social media, and Trump’s statements as president through the use of textiles that embody warmth, craft, permanence, civility, and a shared history. The daintiness and integrity of each piece stand in stark contrast to his presidency.
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.
Studios
Wildland Roots
Mythic Mummery & Place-based Art.
Moni J. Sears (they/she) has lived in Portland, Oregon / on Multnomah Chinook land since 1999, but was born in Aotearoa New Zealand, within the traditional lands of the Ngāi Tahu Māori.
Following a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and several years involvement with film and theatre arts, Moni started a mask-making company (Goblin Art, 1995-2015) which sold original work at markets and galleries in Oregon, Washington and Louisiana, and created custom pieces for film, television and other media in the US and Canada. Moni became interested in earth-based arts and nature education in 2011, and in 2020 decided to combine both mask-making and nature skills into Wildland Roots.