Judy Newland – About Cloth And Me

Handweavers Guild of Boulder
May 2021 Day & Evening Program

Culture and the environment are the two main topics Judy addresses in her textile art. She has been working in textiles for more than forty years as a maker and later as a textile historian. Her background in textile history and museum anthropology allows her to bring a deep cultural engagement to everything she produces. “I don’t just dye fabric in an indigo blue dyepot, I look in the dyepot and see world history, science, fashion, medicine, ritual and your latest pair of jeans! It’s an entire world to explore and share.”

• Exploring the Meaning of Textiles Through Time & Place
Through textiles, we can explore art, society, politics, religion and more, making connections between cultures and through time. Textiles surround and swaddle us from birth to death, a part of the social fabric, bringing meaning to our physical, emotional and spiritual lives. The stories of our lives can be told through textiles. Culture and history can be explored through the study of textiles. Cloth is part of our past, present and future.

• Navajo Weaving – An Enduring Tradition
Navajo weaving is a mirror of the social, economic and political history of the Navajo people of the Southwest. Life experiences woven into cloth give us insight into a long and changing cultural experience. Together we will take an illustrated look at the history and development of these textiles – the important stylistic periods, the influence of trading posts on design and styles, and examples of rugs. From an anthropologist’s point of view what can we learn from the designs, motifs and iconography of Navajo textiles? We will share the story of these textiles by exploring the amazing landscape of the Navajo, their creation stories, cosmology and worldview.

More of Judy’s work can be viewed at clothgirl.com

Photos & Credits: Judy Newland

• May 10, 2021 – Day Guild Meeting 10:00 am
  Exploring the Meaning of Textiles Through Time and Place
• May 11, 2021 – Night Guild Meeting 7:00 pm
  Navajo Weaving – An Enduring Tradition
• Handweavers Guild of Boulder monthly meetings are open to the public – please email programs@handweaversofboulder.org for Zoom access information.

Flóra Carlile-Kovács – Felt Art & Design

Handweavers Guild of Boulder
March 2021 Day & Evening Program

Flóra Carlile-Kovács grew up in Hungary and now resides and works in Seattle, WA. She originally studied ethnography and museology because of their relationship to textiles.  However, she ultimately followed her passion for creating with fiber. She has been teaching various levels of felt making for 15 years as a full-time profession. She also leads annual Felt Tours to Hungary.

Flóra describes felt making as a combination of sculpture and painting.  The world of nature, its colors and materials are one of her inspirations, along with historical traditions in felting.

Flóra enjoys experimenting with materials and teaching herself through trial and error. She feels that, “felt, as an expressive medium, is conducive to an instinctive and spontaneous creative process.” Because of this, much of her work feels organic and living. She has taught a variety of classes, examples of which can be found on her website, florafelts.com. She is currently teaching a jewelry felting workshop for HGB members.

• Her Felting Journey
Seattle-based Flóra Carlile-Kovács will share experiences from her world of felting and teaching. Over the past 15 years, she has taught a wide array of felting classes, including slippers, patterned rugs, project troubleshooting, and jewelry. Flóra also has an impressive portfolio of functional art and larger textile pieces. In many of her works, she beautifully captures texture and color inspired by nature. She seeks to elevate and demonstrate the versatility and artistic potential of felting.

• A Hungarian Felting Trip
Flóra will be sharing with us her experiences during her felt tours to Hungary. She guides clients on a 12-day Felt Tour where they spend 5 days doing project-based wet-felting classes from internationally recognized felt masters while immersing participants in Hungarian culture. Flóra, a native of Hungary herself, provides unique tour opportunities including “craft markets, thermal baths, a special private trunk show and other seasonal programs.”

More of Flóra’s work can be viewed at florafelts.com 

Photo & Credits: Flóra Carlile-Kovács

• March 8, 2021 – Day Guild Meeting 10:00 am
  Her Felting Journey
• March 9, 2021 – Night Guild Meeting 7:00 pm
  A Hungarian Felting Trip
• Handweavers Guild of Boulder monthly meetings are open to the public – please email programs@handweaversofboulder.org for Zoom access information.

Wild Fibers Magazine

Linda Cortright – Wild Fibers

Handweavers Guild of Boulder
January 2021 Day & Evening Program

As editor and publisher of Wild Fibers Magazine, Linda Cortright has traveled to the seven continents, pursuing the role of natural fibers in remote and indigenous communities. Cortright’s experience led her to serve on the Steering Committee of the International Year of Natural Fibres, a global initiative sponsored by the United Nations in Rome, and ongoing work with the IWTO (International Wool and Textile Association).

In 2015, Cortright opened the first —and only— cashmere spinning and weaving center in the High Himalayas, The Pangong Craft Center, providing employment to more than 130 semi-nomadic women. In November 2020, Cortright published her first book, The Eye of Fiber: an uncommon story from around the world, focusing on the impact of culture, climate, and politics within the fiber industry.

• Wild Fibers from Alaska to Afghanistan
From the largest to the smallest fiber animal, natural fibers play a vital role in sustaining women and community in extraordinary ways, including Oomingmak, the Alaskan knitting cooperative started in 1968 that exclusively uses qiviut, to a silk weaving company in northern Afghanistan, which began under Taliban rule. Plus, a look at New Zealand’s wool industry, which has had to adopt new strategies due to a decline in the global demand for wool, the consequences of which stand to have tremendous environmental impact in an area increasingly stressed for natural resources.

• The Real Polar Fleece: the unusual history of natural fibers from Antarctica to the Arctic
Prior to the advent of the now ubiquitous “polar fleece,” (which contains not a thread of natural fiber), fibers from the polar regions have predominantly been in the form of skins and hides. By the strangest of all coincidences, and a near catastrophe, the story of seal wool from the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia during the early 1800s has now come to the fore as the result of Cortright’s first trip to Antarctica in 2018.  Meanwhile, to the north… the far north, on Wrangel Island in the Russian Arctic, the last known place where the musk ox roamed alongside the wooly mammoth during the last Ice Age approximately 40,000 years ago, Cortright explores this remote outpost in a gigantic moon vehicle accompanied by two Russian rangers in search of the largest fiber animal that produces the finest fleece.

Both lectures are filled with magnificent photography, delightful anecdotes, and Cortright’s irrepressible blend of humor and heart.

For more information: www.wildfibersmagazine.com

• January 11, 2021 – Day Guild Meeting 10:00 am
  Wild Fibers from Alaska to Afghanistan
• January 12, 2020 – Night Guild Meeting 7:00 pm
  The Real Polar Fleece: the unusual history of natural fibers from Antarctica to the Arctic
• Handweavers Guild of Boulder monthly meetings are open to the public – please email programs@handweaversofboulder.org for Zoom access information.