In this week's episode, LaChaun speaks with adé Oh (they/themme/àjé) an afro surrealist, animist, and multimedia healing artist. Their creative fire is nourished by earth-based textile crafts, sound arts, experimental and abstract visual arts, nature writing, poetry, capoeira Angola, good food and healing herbs, river time, belly laughter, money, healthy relationships, and peaceful rest. They are a returning generation slow craft artisan and in 2014, made a lifelong commitment to cloth and tapestry weaving. In 2020, they founded dièdiè textile farm and production studio which is currently incubating on collective land Tierra Negra farms. They work with land and sky to grow and process plant-based fibers and dyes for the people. At Gist, we are lucky to support them as one of our artists in residence of 2022 and as a guest on the podcast this week. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-147
In this week's episode, LaChaun speaks with Sobia Ahmad, an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores how our deeply intimate struggles of belonging can inform larger conversations about migration, the tenuous notions of home, personal memory, and cultural porosity. While exploring her ancestral knowledge, Sobia reimagines craft rituals and intergenerational storytelling as acts of liberation. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-146
In this week's episode, LaChaun speaks with one of our artists in residence Kesiena Onosigho. Kesiena's thought-provoking mixed-media collages and installations are informed by her lived experiences, curiosity, and the historic influence on arts & crafts from people within the African Diaspora. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-145
In this week's conversation, LaChaun is switching roles to be interviewed by Michelle Brooks of The Stitchering Shop. You may remember Michelle from episode 110 where she talked about her practice of creating custom textile art pieces using a variety of fiber techniques such as tufting, embroidery stitching, and weaving. In this week's episode, LaChaun gives an update on her fiber and farming journey as well as some insights into her experiences in fiber and how they relate to Michelle's experiences as well. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-144
Our WEAVE Artist in Residency program is a 12-week long remote residency that aims to support weavers and fiber enthusiasts who engage in community-based fiber practices. Each participant will receive a $1,500.00 cash stipend to use with no restrictions, and a $1,500.00 materials budget to shop for materials on the Gist Yarn website. We will select three Artists in Residence in 2022. Shownotes: www.gistyarn.com/artist-residency-2022 Residency Application: https://forms.gle/dfAcFhuPpJ1uL3X29
In this week's episode, LaChaun speaks with author and maker Melanie Falick. Melanie traveled across continents to meet quilters and potters, weavers and painters, metalsmiths, printmakers, woodworkers, and more, all to uncover truths that have been speaking to us for millennia yet feel urgently relevant today. In revealing stories and gorgeous original photographs, Making a Life captures all the joy of making and the power it has to give our lives authenticity and meaning. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-143
In this week's episode, LaChaun speaks with Melvenea Hodges. Melvenea is a Fiber Artist residing in South Bend, Indiana. She was born and raised in Benton Harbor, Michigan where she began learning about fiber arts through experimenting with hair braiding, beading, and weaving. It was through these experiences she found joy and realized her talent in creating with her hands. She creates clothing and accessories using traditional techniques such as block printing, sewing, weaving, spinning, knitting, crocheting, and embroidery. On a small scale, Melvenea grows processes and spins naturally colored cotton that she weaves with. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-142
In this week's episode, Sarah speaks with Tommye Scanlin. Tommye is a well-known tapestry weaver, tapestry teacher, and the author of The Nature of Things: Essays of a Tapestry Weaver, as well as her newest book, Tapestry Design Basics and Beyond. In their conversation, Tommye talks about how she began teaching weaving, and what inspired her to write her latest book. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-141
On this week's episode, Sarah speaks with Rebecca Mezoff. We are really thrilled to welcome Rebecca Mezoff back onto the podcast. Rebecca is a contemporary tapestry weaver in Fort Collins, Colorado, and a tapestry weaving teacher, both in-person and online. She's written books about tapestry weaving, including the recently published book The Art of Tapestry Weaving. We first spoke for the podcast in 2018 for episode 11 and since then, Rebecca and I have stayed in touch and Rebecca has been really instrumental in giving feedback throughout the development of our new line of wool tapestry yarn, Array. We have been collaborating on an exciting project that she’s going to be launching soon and we're excited to share more details in this episode! Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-140
On this week's episode, LaChaun speaks with Lea Thomas. Born in Hawaii and based in Brooklyn, Lea Thomas is a multimedia artist with a focus on music and weaving. Her woven work is centered around hand-looming natural fibers that she dyes with botanical pigments. Her frequent use of indigo is symbolic of her Japanese heritage, honoring a lineage of kimono makers and textile artisans in her immediate ancestry. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-139
On this week's episode, LaChaun speaks with Christine Jablonski, the Director of Operations for Gist Yarn, and designer of Twofold, our upcoming subscription box for rigid heddle weavers. Her theme for this project is double weave. Over the course of a year, she will take you step by step through this exciting technique to weave four projects of setts, textures, and widths not available with single-heddle weaving. In addition to her duties at Gist, Christine has taught extensively and is also a weaver and exhibiting fiber artist. You can find her on Instagram as @soulspaceart. Twofold Subscription box sign-up: www.gistyarn.com/pages/twofold Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-twofold
In this week’s episode, LaChaun speaks with Shanel Wu. Shanel is a Taiwanese-American, nonbinary, queer, maker who uses their fiber skills to entangle craft and tech. Shanel works with smart textiles, weaving, computational craft, and hardware hacking all while pursuing a Ph.D. in Creative Technology Design, at ATLAS Institute, University of Colorado Boulder. www.gistyarn.com/episode-137
In this week’s episode, LaChaun speaks with Maud Lerayer. Maud is the founder of Behind The Hill, a textile company based in Brooklyn, New York. Behind The Hill creates unique and contemporary pieces for home decor using a variety of heirloom cotton which grows wild in shades of pink, terra-cotta, green, beige, and white in Mexico and Guatemala. They are partnered with three communities of Indigenous people in Central America who still grow, spin, and weave color-grown cotton, the same way it has been done for centuries. They work directly with their artisan partners, to strive to keep ancient traditions alive while working hand in hand with the weavers. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-136
In this week’s episode LaChaun speaks with Bryana Bibbs. Bryana is a Chicago-based textile artist, painter, and art educator who earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the founder of the “We Were Never Alone Project, a weaving workshop for victims and survivors of domestic violence. She is a current artist in residence at the Chicago Artist Coalition HATCH and serves on the Surface Design Association’s Education Committee. Bryana’s work has been on view at the Evanston Art Center, ARC Gallery, and the Bridgeport Art Center. Shownotes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-135
In this week’s episode, LaChaun speaks with Carolina Jimenez a Mexican-American textile artist and designer living in Brooklyn New York. In Carolina’s weaving practice she makes monuments as memory signifiers, and vessels into which the past is poured, molded or reshaped (woven, unraveled, or stretched). These monuments reference the body-her body and ours-they speak to the magnificence of our daily lived experience and the monumentality of the mundane. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-134
In this week’s episode, LaChaun is speaking with Amy Dufault. Amy is a sustainable textile industry writer. She works as the sustainability and communications Director for Botanical Colors as well as the Communications Lead for TS Designs. Amy also co-runs the Southeastern New England Fibershed, which has goals to create a digestible dialogue with farmers about climate change in order to create a regional supply chain that supports Massachusetts and Rhode Island textile businesses. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com
We have a special episode for you today, a conversation between myself, LaChaun, and Maggie Putnam, that will be a peek behind the scenes at GIST Yarn and what we’ve been up to. Maggie Putnam Studio is a one-woman creative office that crafts refined brand systems for conscious, intentional brands. And for the last seven months, we have been working on redesigning our GIST Yarn and Weave Podcast brand identity and rebuilding our website to better reflect the company we’ve become, and to better share our podcast episodes, and to better serve our community. Maggie has led that process for us, working closely with our team to learn who we are as a company and translating those conversations into a redesigned brand identity that we are proud to have launched just last week. We learned so much working with Maggie and we thought it would be interesting to share a glimpse of the design process with our listeners and customers. Shownotes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-132
Our team put together a really special episode for you to ring out this year, sharing some of our favorite customer stories that came into our email inbox this year. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-131
In this week’s episode, LaChaun is speaking with Lydia Wendt, the Founder and Design Director of the California Cloth Foundry. Originally from New York, Lydia trained at the Fashion Institute of Technology and worked with some of America's top fashion designers and brands, including Tom Ford for Perry Ellis America, Calvin Klein, Jones New York, and The North Face. Before founding CCF in 2014, she was a member of the faculty of the Academy of Art University's internationally recognized fashion department. There she taught graduate and undergraduate courses in textile design and sustainable fashion. Lydia’s past work in the fast fashion industry informs and guides California Cloth Foundry’s mission: to positively change the industry one bolt of fabric and garment at a time, for the health of the planet and the future of her two daughters. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-130
In this week’s episode, LaChaun is speaking with Sarah Gotowka the founder and director of Luna Fiber Studio, A textile studio specializing in weaving and natural dyes, rooted in sustainability and social justice. Sarah is a Korean adoptee and also works part-time for the Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of New York. There she mentors youth adoptees, and advocates around trans-racial adoption issues. Weaving and dyeing have been a powerful healing tool in Sarah’s journey of exploring her roots and connecting to her ancestral knowledge. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-129
Jeanine Ertl
This is an amazingly inspiring podcast that's filling the void in the podcast-weaving world. These interviews are so well put together, well-articulated and interesting.