June Fireside Chat with Molly Martin

Our June 2023 Fireside Chat was with WARP Member Molly Martin! Molly Martin is a woman of many talents: seamstress, nurse, elementary school teacher in Monrovia, Liberia, and eventually African art and textile aficionado. She has worked at the Smithsonian, studied at Harvard, taught at UMass/Lowell, and shared her vast knowledge with both children and adults in settings that have included schools, weaving groups, colleges, museums, art camps, teachers’ conferences, and, of course, WARP meetings. You can watch the recording from our Fireside Chat with Molly by clicking the link below. You can also watch Molly as a panelist for WARP’s Sept. 2021 Continuing Textile Traditions: The Peace Corps Experience in Africa. 

May Fireside Chat with Kalindi Attar

Our May Fireside Chat was with WARP Member Kalindi Attar! Kalindi Attar, Persian-American, recently moved from Mexico to France with her husband, 10-year-old daughter, and 1-year-old son to be closer to the Thich Nhat Hanh community and Plum Village mindfulness center. During her 16 years living in Oaxaca, Kalindi undertook as co-founder and coordinator of several projects in a Zapotec village in the Sierra Sur. These projects are focused on creating sustainability, community, and innovation at various levels: Khadi Oaxaca, handmade clothing where every step from growing the cotton seed, to spinning, weaving, and dyeing by hand, are 100% sustainable methods and natural; Ananda Learning Center a school based on Montessori methodology, built with local materials of earth and wood, where the majority of the children and teachers are from the community; and Casa Maitri, a retreat space that promotes life in connection with nature, offering lodging, natural healing through sweat lodge/ temazcal and traditional foods from the region. Kalindi also facilitates diverse gatherings focused on healthy communication and community building.

April Fireside Chat with Jennifer Moore

Our April Fireside Chat was with member Jennifer Moore! Jennifer Moore holds an MFA in Fibers and specializes in exploring mathematical  patterns in doubleweave wall hangings. She has exhibited throughout the world,  receiving numerous awards for her work, and has been featured in many weaving  publications. Jennifer lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico and travels extensively to teach  workshops in doubleweave, color and geometric design. Jennifer is on the board of  directors of the nonprofit organization Andean Textile Arts. She was invited to teach  doubleweave to indigenous Quechua weavers in Peru in 2013, where they are once again  excelling in this technique that had been discontinued after the Spanish conquest. She is  the author of The Weaver’s Studio: Doubleweave, Doubleweave: Revised & Expanded,  several doubleweave videos and online courses, and numerous articles.

March Fireside Chat with Dorinda Dutcher & PAZA Bolivia

For this special virtual Fireside Chat, WARP Members had the chance to join Dorinda Dutcher in the rural village of Independencia, Bolivia, for a natural dye workshop with the weaving community. In 2007, the weavers of the Andean rural community of Huancarani asked Dorinda, then a Peace Corps volunteer, for assistance in rescuing natural dye techniques and preserving their textile heritage. So began PAZA, a joint effort of the Bolivian weavers, foreign weavers, WARP members, and many others interested in the preservation of textile traditions. In 2008, Dorinda teamed up with Doña Maxima Cortez a weaver raised in Huancarani but living with her family in Independencia. Over the next 2 years, PAZA contracted natural dye experts to give workshops in Quechua in Independencia to train local trainers in the use of local dye plants and Bolivian cochineal. The Huancarani weavers are the only artisans who continued to revive natural dye recipes through the years, and weave with natural dyed wool. Doña Maxima is the coordinator of PAZA´s Club de Artesanas whose members meet twice a week to build fiber related skills.

February Fireside Chat with Rikki Quintana

Our February 2023 Meet a Member Fireside Chat was with WARP Member Rikki Quintana. Rikki took a blind leap of faith when she founded HoonArts Fair Trade in 2014 after retiring from her 31-year career as a business lawyer. Rikki is passionate about using her long-term partnerships with internationally acclaimed master artists to help art and travel lovers who are drawn to remote, unknown worlds experience the authentic and colorful world of the Silk Road ‘Stans. Rikki delights in being able to welcome people “home to the Silk Road” with interactive experiences, education, and unique and beautiful handmade heritage products with soul. Just as important, HoonArts is also helping to empower over 100 artisans in three ‘Stans.  Rikki’s focus is always on preserving and sharing the authentic local culture, building lasting connections between people, and developing collaborative relationships with other people and organizations.

January Fireside Chat with Mari Gray

Our January 2023 Meet a Member Fireside Chat was with WARP Member Mari Gray. Mari was born in Guatemala to a textile artist mother and a photojournalist father. She grew up in Guatemala, Japan, and the US, surrounded by textile beauties from around the world. As a young adult, she moved back to her birth-country and somewhat serendipitously decided to apply her studies and experience in international development alongside her passion for supporting traditional textile arts. Since 2013, Mari has been the primary designer for her small business Kakaw Designs, which began as a direct online sale website. With now so many branches of the “cacao tree,” she multi-tasks from facilitating and guiding textile travel itineraries in Guatemala to organizing custom production for other businesses. She now holds an MSc in Sustainable Development from the University of Graz (Austria) and the University of Utrecht (Netherlands).

November Fireside Chat with Cael Chappell

Our November 2022 Meet a Member Fireside Chat was with WARP Board Member Cael Chappell. Cael’s basket making grows from his love of basketry. Seventeen years before weaving his first basket, Cael founded Baskets of Africa, a fair trade verified company committed to economic empowerment for basket weavers from over 20 countries. Traveling across Africa to meet weavers, Cael discovered that basketry is as diverse as it is universal. After years of commitment to the art of basketry and the weavers in Africa, Cael wove his first basket in 2017. He is inspired by global weaving traditions to create his own unique baskets. You can view Cael’s handwoven baskets online here. Cael enjoys working full time on his Baskets of Africa project both to support weavers, and to be able to offer an amazing array of African baskets to collectors around the world. Click the link below to watch the recording of Cael's chat:

October Fireside Chats with Elena Laswick

Our October 2022 Meet a Member Fireside Chat was with WARP Board Member Elena Laswick. Elena Laswick grew up in Tucson, AZ, on a steady diet of mariachi, beans, folklórico, and Navajo rugs, which developed her sense of belonging somewhere between Latin America and the US and is why she is passionate about textiles, indigenous rights, and cultural preservation. She resides full time in Nebaj, Guatemala where she works with Maya Ixil weavers on small-scale private label design projects in her free time (as Ixil Collective). She also liaises with artisans in different parts of Guatemala and Peru (through a business partner in Cusco), as Amano Marketplace, all while working remotely for Capital Access as a Quality Control Manager, giving out COVID Emergency Rental funding in Pennsylvania.

September Fireside Chat with Adrienne Sloane

Our September 2022 Meet a Member Fireside Chat was with WARP Board Member Adrienne Sloane. Adrienne is a mixed media artist with a focus in fiber techniques.  Using iconic imagery, her work is frequently a visceral response to the moral and political landscape of the day. By visually addressing the frayed and unraveled places around her, Adrienne seeks to promote thoughtful dialogue about critical questions as we navigate the difficult times we live in. Her work has won many awards, has been widely published, and is included in permanent collections at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Fuller Craft Museum, the Goldstein Museum of Design, and The Kamm Collection. Click here to read a Boston Globe review of Adrienne’s recent exhibit, Peacework. Besides having exhibited and taught internationally, Adrienne has also worked on economic development projects with indigenous knitters in Bolivia and Peru. Click the link below to watch the recording of Adrienne's chat:

August Fireside Chats with Maren Beck

Our August 2022 Meet a Member Fireside Chat was with WARP Board Member Maren Beck. Maren, traveling with her husband and two young sons in 2005, fell in love with rural SE Asian textiles and cultures, and transitioned from being a project manager in the health care field to being a businessperson importing personally selected handcrafted traditional textiles from Laos and Vietnam. She and her husband, Josh Hirschstein, founded Above the Fray: Traditional Hill Tribe Art in 2007 in order to document, support, and introduce to the world the incredible traditional textiles arts and cultures of this region.  Maren and Josh are authors of Silk Weavers of Hill Tribe Laos, published by Thrums Books.  They live in Eugene, Oregon, and Maren leads village textile workshop tours to Laos and Vietnam. Maren is a member of the WARP board of directors, and leads the Artisan Grants Program and the WARP Business Networking Group. Click the link below to watch the recording of Maren's chat:

July Fireside Chats with Julio Cardona

Our July 2022 Meet a Member Fireside Chat was with WARP Member Julio Cardona. Julio was born and raised in eastern Guatemala. As a child he worked at the same jobs as other rural children. When he finished school he moved to Guatemala City where he worked for both the government and in the corporate world until 2005. He then joined the staff of Mayan Hands/Association of Weavers United and had his first experience working with a non-profit organization, a different world. He had his first opportunity to meet WARP members when he helped support the 15th Annual Meeting in 2007, and many of the people he met are still friends today. Click the links below to watch the recordings of Julio's chat sessions. You can also read Julio's introduction script in English Here.

June Fireside Chats with Kelly Majula Koza

Our June 2022 Meet a Member Fireside Chat was with Kelly Manjula Koza, who joined WARP in 2020. Kelly’s background includes 30 years of volunteering with an NGO based in India as well as corporate work in technology, communications, and program management, and she senses an emerging connection between gizmo-based technology overload and the rising desire for handmade items, especially in fiber arts. Kelly works with the tessitrici artigianali— the women who maintain the art of traditional handweaving on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. Seeking to preserve, protect, promote, encourage, and advance the tessitrici artigianali and the arts, culture, and heritage of Sardinia in a sustainable manner, she founded Sardinian Arts in 2013. In 2017, she produced and curated Sardinian Textiles: An Exhibit of Handwoven Art in San Francisco, which included related events such as Intrecciati, an intercultural fiber arts project. Kelly’s documentary I Want to Weave the Weft of Time features the few remaining hand weavers of Samugheo, and she has started films about weavers working in two other areas/traditions in Sardinia. While Kelly gave many online presentations during the pandemic, plans for more in-person shows, trunk shows, presentations, and tours were slowed, but are again budding! Click the links below to watch recordings of the chat sessions:

May Fireside Chats with Vanina Bujalter

Our May 2022 Meet a Member Fireside Chat was with Vanina Bujalter, who has been a WARP Member since 2013. Vanina was born in Buenos Aires. She has a degree in Psychology, but she found her true calling and has been dedicated to Textile Arts and Crafts for more than 35 years. At age fifteen, she began studying with her mother, Mimi Bujalter, one of the outstanding artists within the Argentine Textile Art Movement, and Founder of the Argentine Centre of Textile Art. With Mimi, Vanina studied classic and modern textile techniques, fiber dyeing, felt techniques, and handmade papermaking. Vanina has taught and exhibited throughout Argentina and internationally. Her work has won many awards, including the UNESCO Seal of Excellence for Handicrafts, and  can be seen in museums and private collections around the world. You can follow Vanina on Facebook and Instagram, and also find her work online here. Click the links below to watch recordings of the chat sessions:

Session 1: Saturday, May 7th (English)

Session 2: Sunday, May 15th (español)

Session 3: Tuesday, May 17th (English)