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.
Businesses
Altar
Altar is a clothing company and retail store with a brick-and-mortar location in Portland, OR. We initially opened a business in 2010 (under another name in the same retail location) with a focus on supporting independent artists from our immediate region, and by 2015 when we became Altar, we had grown that vision into the beautifully curated and ever-changing space it is today. We celebrate independent manufacturers and artists from across North America, with a focus on the stories that are woven into their work. We use the phrase, “objects with meaning” because we believe in sharing the unique stories behind these pieces.
Our clothing brand, Altar Houseline, is proudly made in America using deadstock materials and serves size gradations from size small to 6XL.
Cassie Ridgway opened her shop in 2010 with less than $3000 in the bank and a night job. Owning and operating this small business has been defined by labor of love and perseverance. Cassie's passion for sustainably produced and ethically manufactured apparel was a driving force, and has kept her laser focused on making this company better by the year. Her aesthetic sensibilities are always sort of changing (ok, sometimes all over the place), but she has always consistently been inspired by desert color-stories, moody floral motifs, art deco filigrees, and modern art.
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
Bardsley Handwoven
Jessica Bardsley is a weaver and textile artist living in Portland, Oregon. Primarily self-taught, Jessica is interested in exploring weaving and other textiles as a way to connect to culture, history, and heritage, and using it as an avenue to build community and connections across generations.
Studios
Bautista Weaving
Francisco Bautista is a fourth generation Master Weaver in his family. He and his wife Laura were born in Teotitlán del Valle, a Zapotec village in Oaxaca, Mexico; they have always been fascinated by the infinite possibilities of crossing threads. They use only hand-spun, hand dyed wool, and weave each of their works on a foot pedal loom. The vibrant colors you see in their weavings come from their own natural and aniline dyes. Together they work to ensure that the quality achieved by the Master Weavers of old will continue to live on in each piece they weave.
Businesses
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.
Schools
Damascus Fiber Arts School
Audrey Moore has been teaching Navajo-style weaving for 50 years and is the owner of Damascus Fiber Arts School, formerly known as Damascus Pioneer Craft School. Terry Olson, once Audrey's student, has taught Tapestry-style weaving at Damascus for 20 years. Tammy Rosecrans is a current student, going on her second year with DFAS, who focuses primarily on Navajo-style weaving.
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
Organizations
GLEAN
The GLEAN Program invites artists to push the boundaries of material exploration. With a stipend to support their practice and seemingly endless materials to work with, artists are challenged to expand their existing studio practice by making work from the materials gleaned from the Metro Central Transfer Station (aka, “the dump”). One of the goals of this program is to introduce established and emerging artists to the wealth of materials available to them through the GLEAN. With the ultimate goal to reduce waste and raise awareness with this program, no prior experience with discarded materials is required. All artists in the Portland area are encouraged to apply.
Businesses
Inside Fashion Design
Inside Fashion Design shares behind the scenes look into the Apparel Industry. Created to support, inspire, educate, inform, connect and engage community.
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
Keeva Moselle
www.instagram.com/realmandreigndesignstudio
Growing up Keeva Moselle made all of her Halloween costumes from age nine on, repurposing items from around the house. Keeva learned to work with her hands and a myriad of materials and techniques to create wearable art. These skills eventually translated into fashion design and garment construction. Today Keeva is a Portland native artist creating large scale interactive art installations, immersive beauty experiences, costumes, and multimedia art. All of her endeavors primarily use post-consumer waste & salvage materials. Keeva is a graduate of Oregon State University Graduate School, where she studied socio-political ethics. Keeva is an environmentalist and a Black Feminist thinker and author; her art reflects that same powerfully dynamic voice. In 2011, Keeva created an original character “The Queen of Unicorns”, as a public persona to inspire imaginative play and give young girls, especially those of color, representation in the cosplay and festival community.
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.
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
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.
Organizations
Multnomah Arts Center
The Multnomah Arts Center (MAC) provides excellent arts education in the visual and performing arts at an affordable cost to students of all ages. We offer programs in music, movement, dance, theater, woodshop, literary arts, conditioning, metal arts, mixed media, printmaking, drawing, painting, photography, ceramics, sculpture, textiles, and more. Programs run year-round, and scholarships are available. Along with our vibrant arts education program, MAC hosts theatre, music & dance performances, gallery exhibitions, and other special events.
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.
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 Textile Club
www.instagram.com/portlandtextileclub
Portland Textile Club is a social club that meets on occasion to talk all things textile, fabric, design, and printing practices. Established in 2014, Portland, OR.
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
ReClaim It!
ReClaim It, is a place where the creative citizens of Portland can find unique materials to reuse, repair, and reimagine.
Businesses
Reclaimed Wool
Heidi Leugers created her brand and studio, Reclaimed Wool in 1998 with one guiding principle: to turn her artistic practice into a business only if she could "reclaim" all the waste she (also) had created in the process of making adorable or functional items - whether for exhibition or for sale. Her studio has been zero waste for over two decades. The 8K - 12K hotpads, coasters, holiday ornaments and pincushions she makes, are limited to what she can produce with her own hands and can be found at museum stores, craft galleries, and specialty retailers. In 2007, her zero waste practice received critical, scholarly attention in the college teaching text, "Cycle-Logical Art", by Linda Weintraub. Heidi firmly believes that "zero-waste" is a practice, not a purchase.
Businesses
Renewal Workshop
The Renewal System takes discarded apparel and textiles and turns them into Renewed Apparel, upcycled materials or recycling feedstock. Data is collected on everything that flows through the system and is given back to our brand partners to help them improve the production and design of future products. It is a zero waste system that recovers the full value out of what has already been created as a way of serving customers, partners and planet.
Businesses
Revive Upholstery
Revive Designs and Upholstery was established in Portland, Oregon in 2011. Specializing in heirloom furniture, including vintage re-upholstery, mid-century antique commercial design, bespoke product.
interior design sustainability textile design textile reuse upholstery
Organizations
SCRAP PDX
portland.scrapcreativereuse.org
SCRAP PDX is a nonprofit creative reuse center specializing in reused materials for the arts, education programs, birthday parties, and more.
Businesses
Sustainable Fashion Forum
www.thesustainablefashionforum.com
Founded on the principals of discovery and education, the Sustainable Fashion Forum is a highly-curated, community-driven sustainable fashion conference held annually in Portland, Oregon. The SFF looks to the future by fostering honest, thought-provoking and in-depth conversations about the social and environmental effects fashion has on our world and what we can do individually and collectively to improve it.
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.
Businesses
Weaver House
Weaver House is a yarn shop, textile studio and weaving school located in Philadelphia. We weave heirloom textiles in honor of craft tradition, to regain tactility and a hand-making consciousness within the home and in relation to the body. Our woven practice is forever recorded in cloth, forming a tangible language between maker and loom. We teach mindfulness and mediation throughout all of workshops, and believe that weaving can be therapeutic and healing.