Slow Fiber Studios is returning with Conversations with Cloth online program, Series TWO: connecting Japanese shibori tradition with the world from the Americas, Africa, Southeast Asia to Southwest China. Esteemed artists and curators Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada and Ana Lisa Hedstrom, use shibori as a common language to decipher dyed patterns to reveal memories and varied …

This month’s addition to the SDA Book Club is Raw Material: Working Wool in the West by Stephany Wilkes. We’re excited to have our recurring author, Faith Hagenhofer, back to review this lovely book! Raw Material: Working Wool in the West Full disclosure: For as long as I’ve been an artist member of Surface Design …

Susan Hensel is a multidisciplinary artist, with a 50+ year career, who combines a mixed media practice with embroidery across digital and manual platforms. She make sculpture and wall art using the colors and techniques of commercial embroidery, designed in the computer and stitched out on the computer-aided embroidery machine. This ongoing pandemic project is called …

This month we have a bonus entry into the SDA Book Club with Crafting Aotearoa: A Cultural History of Making in New Zealand and the Wider Moana Oceania, edited by Karl Chitham, Kolokesa Māhina-Tuai, and Damian Skinner, and reviewed by D Wood. Crafting Aotearoa: A Cultural History of Making in New Zealand and the Wider …

This month’s member spotlight is Aotearoa New Zealand-based artist Jeanette Verster. Jeanette takes us through her creative process, materials, and how her ideas develop over time. Finding myself in an out-of-the-way corner of New Zealand due to a move for my husband’s job in 2018 I was at a junction career-wise and had the luxury …

Imogen Zino is a designer and artist based in Auckland, New Zealand. She completed a Master of Design at Auckland University of Technology that explored large-scale multi-sensory interaction and the benefits of engaging with our environment through the body. Her works are intuitive and tactile in nature. Delving into the relationship between body, surface and …

We have quite an exciting lineup of books to be featured this year in SDA’s Book Club! Our first addition for 2021 is A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire by Amy Butler Greenfield, reviewed by Vivien Zepf. A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of …

My making is intuitive and resourceful, I appreciate and value the time and natural materials that combine, intersect and grow, reflecting both love and life. I have always been drawn to embroidery, weaving and gardening: powerful and diverse mediums that connect me with other makers, working together in communities or at home. I honor those …

For me there is nothing more satisfying than harvesting materials respectfully from the land, processing them and creating something beautiful. I admit, I am obsessed by raranga (Māori weaving). Making through raranga processes has been a source of cultural reclamation and grounding that I otherwise would not have experienced. Harvesting and preparing the materials is …

Exporting Shibori from Arimatsu to Africa, Machine Sewn-Resist and Complex Substrate (Episode 4), was the final episode of Slow Fiber Studios’ online talk Conversations with Cloth. Hosts Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada and Ana Lisa Hedstrom ended the premier series on how Arimatsu artisans created new textile designs when faced with foreign trade opportunities, post WWII. Highlighting …