Portland TextileX Month Mixed Identities: Interlaced Communities Threads of Community with Family and Friends

Adriene Cruz will share samples of her threaded rituals and offer participants a hands-on opportunity to make your own amulet with fragrant plants and cotton fabric to take home and remember. Harlem native Adriene Cruz creates brilliantly colored fabric art embellished in rhythmic improvisational arrangements of cultural beauty.  Her creative vision has garnered invitations to create beyond fabric to public art in Portland allowing her imagery to flow from textile creations to concrete fabrications. Adriene has exhibited her textiles internationally in Brazil, Costa Rica and South Africa and Nationally at the Smithsonian, The Folk Art Museum, NY,  American Craft Museum , NY, The Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, The National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis,  and the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA, to name a few.

Artist and herbalist Bridgette Hickey will share her practice of working with plants for natural dying and ancestral connections grounded in quilting and sewing. Midnite Abioto, Queen Mother of Studio Abioto, will offer perspectives on plant fibers, art and African diasporic culture with specific references to cotton, tobacco, hemp and sugar cane. She will also give an introduction to an upcoming exhibit entitled “Healing our Roots.” Bee Guardian Valko Sichel will offer insight on human relationships with bees and his practice with beeswax and textile design, plus offer bee-related textiles, collectibles, and eye candy treasures for sale. His marketplace will be ongoing throughout the event.

Schedule

12:00-1:00pm: Adriene workshop (registration required)

1:15-2:00pm: Bridgette

2:15-3:00pm: Midnite

3:15-4:00pm: Valko

We are honored to again partner with Prosper Portland and Athletic & Outdoor during this year’s PTXM festival. Their generous sponsorship will help produce this Mixed Identities: Interlaced Communities event.