An Uplifting Message from Linda Davis and Judith Rees, Education Co-Chairs:

The ANWG Education Committee is pleased to announce an exciting and diverse lineup of workshop and seminar leaders covering a wide range of fiber-related topics. While weaving is foremost, spinning, dyeing, felting, basketry and other fiber-related topics will also be included. In 2018, Co-Chairs Linda Gettmann and Sue Walsh toured Oregon guilds to hear what instructors and topics people wanted to see at the conference and the Education Committee endeavored to match as many of those interests as possible.  At the end of April a full list of workshop and seminar leaders will be announced on the website’s Education section, but to give you a sneak preview, we are introducing two of them here in this blog.

Francisco Bautista                

Francisco Bautista is an amazingly talented Zapotec rug weaver who was born in Teotitlán del Valle, a Zapotec village in Oaxaca, Mexico. Francisco, along with his wife and son are all weavers, and moved some years ago to Sandy, Oregon where he established himself as a renowned weaver of Zapotec and contemporary rugs and tapestries. He shows his work throughout the U.S. and has won several prestigious commissions and awards, including the Best of Show Award for the Weaving Guilds of Oregon traveling show in 2018. He will be teaching workshops on Zapotec rug weaving and traditional natural dyes.

Giovanna Imperia

Giovanna Imperia of Houston, Texas has introduced weavers to the use of non-traditional materials in the many workshops and seminars she has taught at Convergence, regional conferences and internationally. At the conference, she will teach two 2-day workshops. The first workshop will acquaint students with a range of fibers such as polyurethane, thermoplastic, metal, and elastine as well as a wide variety of funky and futuristic yarns to create interesting and unusual loom-controlled pieces. The second workshop will focus on weaving with wire and exploring various structures including doubleweave and tapestry techniques. Her woven pieces – yes, on shaft looms – are nothing short of unbelievable.

Stay tuned for more information on the 2023 workshops and instructors in future conference blogs. At the end of April a listing of all the instructors and their workshops will be on the website in the Education section.

Stay updated

The Weaving Guilds of Oregon conference steering committee is very busy planning for the upcoming ANWG Conference. Please continue to visit our website for information and conference updates. If you would like to receive information delivered to your inbox, please subscribe to the conference blog.