Gather Club
Portland, Oregon, 2025
Purpose: To bring a small group together into a contemplative space to commune with a specific natural environment with new awareness. The intention was for participants to walk away with a clear memory of weaving practices being in relationship with land and life, holding a greater understanding of the origins and types of various fiber materials, and direct practices for finding inspiration in place-based observation.
Approach: Participants were given prompts to find objects and elements of study in the environment and ways to interpret and translate their observations into woven structures. As students weave, participants were guided in a conversation about material and color properties, a brief lesson on the materiality of fibers. Participants were encouraged to notice how the experience of weaving asked them to focus in, and how that affected their overall state.
Findings: Some participants wove with materials found in the environment where others wove purely from inspiration. Participants noticed how the felt sense of the passage of time became altered by their level of presence on the task, and a conversation about mediation and what is personally meditating for each person unfolded. Participants asked questions about their clothing and we had a conversation about the development of fibers throughout history into current contexts and continuous land-based realities of our material origins.