During the Summer of 2024, I led eight workshops at Bushel Collective in Delhi, NY. All of which were open to the public and completely free thanks to a Community Arts grant from the Roxbury Arts Group.

Over the course of the Summer, I invited participants to engage in the ancient craft of handweaving as a practice in embodiment, exploring the overarching inquiry – What is weaving? What is a loom? – from different angles: conceptually, technically, historically, mythically, poetically. Each week we wove on a variety of looms and also made our own – weaving with a range of materials from locally-sourced raw wool and yarn, fabric strips, rope, foraged plant material, and other unusual materials. Our exploration allowed participants to consider our relationship to the land we inhabit, to our ancestral lands and textile traditions, as well as to our plant, animal, elemental, and spirit kin that also weave in many forms. It also allowed us to consider our relationship to both time and deep-time through rhythm, repetition, pattern, and structure.

The Weaving Club culminated in an exhibition of woven work from the participants and also invited the larger community to engage in the practice of weaving.

Shortly after the exhibition, I had the privilege of presenting the final result of the Weaving Club to the attendees of the Textile Society of America’s 2024 Symposium Shifts & Strands, Rethinking the Potentials and Possibilities of Textiles. 

How did the Weaving Club emerge?

The context for Weaving Club emerged over the past few years when I became involved at Succurro – a land-based collaborative project based in East Meredith, NY providing space for Creativity through working with one’s hands. In 2019, I joined their Fellowship program, which invites people into a deep investigation of the role of Art and the Artist. 

During Fellowship, I noticed how my technical approach to weaving did not honor the historical, cultural, and ancestral contexts of weaving. I wanted to study further through hands-on learning and relationship to land, and moved from Philadelphia to Succurro to work on the farm and continue participating as a research Fellow. 

Weaving Club emerged through mentorship and in collaboration with Owyn Ruck, who co-founded Succurro and Textile Arts Center in NYC, and is also a weaver, instructor, and healing practitioner. Over the past few years, we have been following a thread of curiosity – how does craft and using my hands help me understand my place in the network of being?