Eduardo Portillo & Mariá Eugenia Dávila
María Dávila & Eduardo Portillo, live and work in Mérida, Venezuelan Andes. Textile Artists, devoted together since 1983 to the silk world, fibers and natural dyes. They are interested in experiences, materials, and processes that bear the imprint of people and places. Their work is driven by their relationship with their surroundings and how it can be communicated with a contemporary textile language.
Rowland Ricketts
Rowland Ricketts utilizes natural dyes and historical processes to create contemporary textiles that span art and design. Trained in indigo farming and dyeing in Japan, Rowland received his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2005 and is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Art, Architecture & Design at Indiana University. His work has been exhibited at the Textile Museum in Washington, DC, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Seattle Asian Art Museum and has been recognized with a 2012 United States Artists Fellowship.
Stony Creek Colors
Sarah Bellos, CEO and Founder, previously owned and operated a textile dye house offering garment and piece dyeing for independent fashion designers. A graduate of the Cornell University Agriculture School (2004), she has 10 years of leadership experience in the textile, agriculture and sustainability industries. Sarah developed Stony Creek Colors to help lead the sustainable transformation of the textile dye industry and build the most transparent and profitable textiles chemical company on earth. Prior to launching Stony Creek Colors, Sarah operated Artisan Natural Dyeworks, a small batch textile dye house garment and piece dyeing for independent fashion designers seeking plant-based dyes at a commercial scale. She has been a recognized leader in research efforts to bring bio-based colorant production to farmers in the Southeastern U.S. In 2015, Bellos was awarded the Young Entrepreneur Award by the AATCC, American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists, the world’s leading not-for-profit association serving textile professionals.
MAIWA
Charllotte Kwon has come a long way since founding Maiwa as a one-woman business—both literally and figuratively. An intrepid traveller who seems as at-home in India as she does in her native Canada, Charllotte has grown her artisan textile company into a slow clothing brand, a supply shop for dyes and materials, and has also spun off a charitable foundation dedicated to assisting artisans. She also writes books, organizes tours, and leads the Maiwa School for textile and natural dye enthusiasts. She works with her daughter Sophena to run MAIWA.
Catharine Ellis and Joy Boutrup
Joy Boutrup has a background in textile engineering, chemistry, and history. She has taught for many years and has a unique ability to develop new methods and techniques, based on both old and new technologies. She lives in Denmark. Catharine Ellis is a textile artist, educator, and the author of Woven Shibori. Her work integrates both weaving and dyeing. She has focused her study on natural dyes for the last ten years. She lives in the mountains of North Carolina.
Catharine Ellis
Catharine Ellis has been a weaver and a dyer for over 40 years. After three decades of teaching the fiber program at Haywood Community College in NC she is now dedicated to studio work, focusing on natural dye processes. She also does specialized, selected teaching in the U.S. and internationally. Catharine is the originator of the woven shibori process and author of the instructional book, Woven Shibori (Interweave Press, 2005).
Tim McLaughlin