Submitted by Dianne McD. (click on any image for a larger view)
Back in February, I told you about a weaving exhibit being held at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU. The name of the exhibit is “Weaving Data” and it explores the relationship between computers and weaving. You can read that blog post here.
In the comments, a couple of members suggested a field trip might be in order. But it didn’t go any farther than that, until…..
Member, Dawn W decided to take the bull by the horns and called the museum to set up a guided tour for MPS members. Then she reached out to those that expressed interest in the blog comments. And so it was that at 3:00 on the afternoon of March 30th, six of us met at Portland State University where the museum is located.
Dawn had arranged for Anna Kienberger to be our docent, and Anna was both delightful and well informed about the exhibit. As we began the tour, our attention was drawn to this marvelous piece. It was our favorite for good reason. The ability to portray a beautiful woven rug that melted away at the center was mind-boggling.
The tour was an hour long and took us through many rooms with lots of gorgeous and interesting textiles. Some of them were almost quilt-like while others were very graphic.
Afterwards, we all met for Happy Hour at The Zags Hotel near the museum where we enjoyed pizza and comradery while sharing our second-favorite piece of the exhibit. It was interesting to hear which pieces reached out to each of us. None of us had the same second favorite. Mine was this piece that was woven with the warp in a natural fiber and the weft in a polyester. During the dyeing process, the dye only worked well on the warp fibers while the polyester more or less let the dye go. 
A big THANKS to Dawn for arranging this. We all agreed that it’s good to get outside of our quilting world and expand our horizons. By the way, the exhibit is free and open until April 29th, 2023; so there is still time to catch it!
What do you do to expand your horizons? Have you seen this exhibit? Let us know in the comments below.
I really enjoyed this exhibit and I especially enjoyed viewing it with other quilters. I’m keeping my eyes open for other sources of inspiration. I hope we can all get together again for an exhibit at the Portland Art Museum or one of the many gardens around Portland.
It was so interesting to see the connection between weaving and computers and we had a good trip down memory lane looking at the punch cards many of us remembered from
College! Thank you for a great afternoon everyone! The first displayed piece and the story behind it was worth the whole trip!
Highly recommend this exhibit. This was so much fun!
I loved seeing the exhibit with like-minded friends and then going to Zags for Happy Hour. I got to know some of our guild members better, and that was a bonus.
thanks for the write up Dianne. A great show. Very sorry I missed it! Amazing work!
Sounds like a wonderful outing! Sorry I couldn’t come, but reinforces for me the many interesting initiatives of our Guild.Thank you Dawn for taking the lead! The images in this blog post were fascinating.