our lives and textiles
The Textile Therapist is essentially a concept turned brand. Emerging from an intense desire to learn and understand oneself, this creative act flourished within the environmental conditions provided at it’s inception. An educational institution, an intuitive approach to creating art with fiber, combined with an intense desire to learn and grow, brought us to this moment. For more information on the history of textiles and the textile therapist please scroll to the section below.
Currently, The Textile Therapist functions as a source of inspiration, opportunity, knowledge, and encouragement. All tangible items created are sourced from attunement to the maker’s world and curiosity around self. This attuned approach is one carried into collaborations, commissions, and projects with outside brands, individuals, and groups.
Our mission is to bring experience and knowledge, not only with textiles, but of our existence with them, to the forefront of our work; to understand and deepen the experience we share with our lives through textiles.
We value your truth, insight, and understanding of what makes your environment and life with textiles yours, as you are, and always have been the expert of your existence and relationship with them.
With the Textile Therapist, we hope you may find a space that feels safe, an opportunity to attune, and an emergence of curiosity for your life with textiles too.
Whether we think of rugs on the floor, tapestry on the wall, or clothes on our bodies, we continually attune to these fiber creations; these ways we to meet ourselves in time, emotion, and space.
As a clinician, and an artist, my worlds are forever intertwining. Discussions around the comfort of a therapeutic space, often reflect the sensory desires many of us crave.
Therapy themes of connection, empowerment, safety, forgiveness, choice, urge, congruence, and acceptance pervade my experience with textiles and inform much of my work along the process of creating art and functional items.
Our immediate, deepest, most subconscious needs as humans can, and have been, met for thousands of years through attunement to ourselves and creating/utilizing textiles.
Literature providing evidence based practices for incorporating textile art into the therapeutic setting is limited. However, ones on insight into the therapeutic benefits of attunement to, and working with, textiles is as vast as ourselves.
The Textile Therapist is not therapy provided to you by a therapist, it is an open invitation to curiously open up to the intuitive knowledge you already have within your life with textiles.
To notice, let in, acknowledge, and grow.
Textile art is one of the oldest forms of art in human civilization. At its inception, it was not focused on looks, but for practical purposes—such as clothing or blankets to keep warm. This dates all the way back to prehistoric times, and anthropologists estimate that this is between 100,000 to 500,000 years ago. These goods were made from animal skins, furs, leaves, and more.
Before the industrial revolution, all clothing and textile work was done by hand. This included gathering fibers, creating yarn, and composing the piece. The process was intense, required tailors, seamstresses, and additional assistance such as dyes, transportation, and maintenance.
Textile work started as a way to meet needs, weaving natural fibers to create forms for use and a felt sense safety. Textiles then moved to creations outside of the necessity realm, but were still hand made and created as individual pieces. Textiles were inspired by nature and displayed in patterns, and used to tell stories through motifs. Textile creation provided an opportunity for connection through learning and teaching, empowerment in skillset, and choice in manipulating the fibers. We connected with others and we connected with ourselves.
William Morris and the arts and crafts movement sought to rebel against the negative impact of industry. The art of making things and creating with textiles, spending time to perfect a skill, connecting with the community, and being intentional with ourselves and our time were ways of existing now under threat. Now we are seeing more people calling for what Morris called for “a fitness of purpose, truth to the nature of materials and methods of production, and individual expression by both designer and worker”
The industrial revolution introduced what I like to think of as a sort of existential crisis for humans and textiles coexistence which we see today. The invention of the power loom and other machinery produced fabric on a larger scale, and drove the cost of textiles down. Textiles were now available to more people, with more availability, to do more experimenting and existing with them, which we love of course, everyone deserves to play with textiles. However, this also meant the way we understand and create with them would change as well.
Modern Era textiles include textile-based objects. The term fiber art or textile art generally “describe textile-based objects that have no intended use”. Some argue textile art is not high art and many art therapy programs primarily focus on drawing, painting, clay, and sculpture as mediums. Many consider individual works incorporating textiles as “crafts” or “hobbies” which are done as frivolous pass times.