Invitation to the Divine — Amy Putansu

Like all great arts, textiles recreate our visiton of the world. We hold them up as exemplars of skill, ingenuity, creativity, and ambition. Textiles are poetic metaphors woven from ideas just as much as they are physical items woven from fibres.

Joy Boutrup is a textile engineer, chemist, and historian from Denmark. Catharine Ellis is a textile artist from North Carolina who specializes in combining weaving and dyeing. They first met at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. They have worked and taught collaboratively for many years.

In this lecture Amy Putansu will discuss how notions of spirituality have influenced her own hand-woven artwork. Inspired by Buddhism, Zen design precepts, and the minimalist art movement, Amy presents a powerful way to reimagine textiles as an invitation to the divine.

Recorded at the Maiwa School of Textiles September 14th 2017.

Aya Matsunaga is a Japanese textile artist who tempered her formal studies by moving to Nottingham, England and embracing the UK fibre art scene of the 1990s.

When leading natural dye expert Michel Garcia goes into a garden, what does he see? He sees botanical strategies for survival that often give new insights into dye procedures and methods.

When leading natural dye expert Michel Garcia goes into a garden, what does he see? He sees botanical strategies for survival that often give new insights into dye procedures and methods.

For over thirty years Susan Shie has been producing art on cloth that mixes the personal and the political. Her distinct method of working combines narrative, drawing, and writing into large-format, highly graphic art quilts.

On October 5, 2015, Barbara Todd delivered her lecture, "Stone Drawings and Quilted Lines" or "One Day Tells Its Tale To Another." to a full house at the Maiwa School of Textiles.

Recorded at the Maiwa School of Textiles Lecture series on September 19, 2016.