In this week's episode, LaChaun speaks with adé Oh (they/themme/àjé) an afro surrealist, animist, and multimedia healing artist. Their creative fire is nourished by earth-based textile crafts, sound arts, experimental and abstract visual arts, nature writing, poetry, capoeira Angola, good food and healing herbs, river time, belly laughter, money, healthy relationships, and peaceful rest. They are a returning generation slow craft artisan and in 2014, made a lifelong commitment to cloth and tapes...
May 22, 2023•1 hr 1 min
In this week's episode, LaChaun speaks with Sobia Ahmad, an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores how our deeply intimate struggles of belonging can inform larger conversations about migration, the tenuous notions of home, personal memory, and cultural porosity. While exploring her ancestral knowledge, Sobia reimagines craft rituals and intergenerational storytelling as acts of liberation. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-146
Dec 23, 2022•53 min
In this week's episode, LaChaun speaks with one of our artists in residence Kesiena Onosigho. Kesiena's thought-provoking mixed-media collages and installations are informed by her lived experiences, curiosity, and the historic influence on arts & crafts from people within the African Diaspora. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-145
Sep 26, 2022•1 hr 6 min
In this week's conversation, LaChaun is switching roles to be interviewed by Michelle Brooks of The Stitchering Shop. You may remember Michelle from episode 110 where she talked about her practice of creating custom textile art pieces using a variety of fiber techniques such as tufting, embroidery stitching, and weaving. In this week's episode, LaChaun gives an update on her fiber and farming journey as well as some insights into her experiences in fiber and how they relate to Michelle's ex...
Sep 06, 2022•56 min
Our WEAVE Artist in Residency program is a 12-week long remote residency that aims to support weavers and fiber enthusiasts who engage in community-based fiber practices. Each participant will receive a $1,500.00 cash stipend to use with no restrictions, and a $1,500.00 materials budget to shop for materials on the Gist Yarn website. We will select three Artists in Residence in 2022. Shownotes: www.gistyarn.com/artist-residency-2022 Residency Application: https://forms.gle/dfAcFhuPpJ1uL3X29
Jan 18, 2022•10 min
In this week's episode, LaChaun speaks with author and maker Melanie Falick. Melanie traveled across continents to meet quilters and potters, weavers and painters, metalsmiths, printmakers, woodworkers, and more, all to uncover truths that have been speaking to us for millennia yet feel urgently relevant today. In revealing stories and gorgeous original photographs, Making a Life captures all the joy of making and the power it has to give our lives authenticity and meaning. Show notes: www.gisty...
Nov 22, 2021•50 min
In this week's episode, LaChaun speaks with Melvenea Hodges. Melvenea is a Fiber Artist residing in South Bend, Indiana. She was born and raised in Benton Harbor, Michigan where she began learning about fiber arts through experimenting with hair braiding, beading, and weaving. It was through these experiences she found joy and realized her talent in creating with her hands. She creates clothing and accessories using traditional techniques such as block printing, sewing, weaving, spinning, knitti...
Nov 01, 2021•45 min
In this week's episode, Sarah speaks with Tommye Scanlin. Tommye is a well-known tapestry weaver, tapestry teacher, and the author of The Nature of Things: Essays of a Tapestry Weaver, as well as her newest book, Tapestry Design Basics and Beyond. In their conversation, Tommye talks about how she began teaching weaving, and what inspired her to write her latest book. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-141
Sep 06, 2021•36 min
On this week's episode, Sarah speaks with Rebecca Mezoff. We are really thrilled to welcome Rebecca Mezoff back onto the podcast. Rebecca is a contemporary tapestry weaver in Fort Collins, Colorado, and a tapestry weaving teacher, both in-person and online. She's written books about tapestry weaving, including the recently published book The Art of Tapestry Weaving. We first spoke for the podcast in 2018 for episode 11 and since then, Rebecca and I have stayed in touch and Rebecca has been reall...
Aug 09, 2021•36 min
On this week's episode, LaChaun speaks with Lea Thomas. Born in Hawaii and based in Brooklyn, Lea Thomas is a multimedia artist with a focus on music and weaving. Her woven work is centered around hand-looming natural fibers that she dyes with botanical pigments. Her frequent use of indigo is symbolic of her Japanese heritage, honoring a lineage of kimono makers and textile artisans in her immediate ancestry. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-139
Jun 28, 2021•34 min
On this week's episode, LaChaun speaks with Christine Jablonski, the Director of Operations for Gist Yarn, and designer of Twofold, our upcoming subscription box for rigid heddle weavers. Her theme for this project is double weave. Over the course of a year, she will take you step by step through this exciting technique to weave four projects of setts, textures, and widths not available with single-heddle weaving. In addition to her duties at Gist, Christine has taught extensively and is also a ...
Apr 19, 2021•20 min
In this week’s episode, LaChaun speaks with Shanel Wu. Shanel is a Taiwanese-American, nonbinary, queer, maker who uses their fiber skills to entangle craft and tech. Shanel works with smart textiles, weaving, computational craft, and hardware hacking all while pursuing a Ph.D. in Creative Technology Design, at ATLAS Institute, University of Colorado Boulder. www.gistyarn.com/episode-137
Apr 05, 2021•44 min
In this week’s episode, LaChaun speaks with Maud Lerayer. Maud is the founder of Behind The Hill, a textile company based in Brooklyn, New York. Behind The Hill creates unique and contemporary pieces for home decor using a variety of heirloom cotton which grows wild in shades of pink, terra-cotta, green, beige, and white in Mexico and Guatemala. They are partnered with three communities of Indigenous people in Central America who still grow, spin, and weave color-grown cotton, the same way it ha...
Mar 22, 2021•37 min
In this week’s episode LaChaun speaks with Bryana Bibbs. Bryana is a Chicago-based textile artist, painter, and art educator who earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the founder of the “We Were Never Alone Project, a weaving workshop for victims and survivors of domestic violence. She is a current artist in residence at the Chicago Artist Coalition HATCH and serves on the Surface Design Association’s...
Mar 08, 2021•30 min
In this week’s episode, LaChaun speaks with Carolina Jimenez a Mexican-American textile artist and designer living in Brooklyn New York. In Carolina’s weaving practice she makes monuments as memory signifiers, and vessels into which the past is poured, molded or reshaped (woven, unraveled, or stretched). These monuments reference the body-her body and ours-they speak to the magnificence of our daily lived experience and the monumentality of the mundane. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-134
Feb 22, 2021•29 min
In this week’s episode, LaChaun is speaking with Amy Dufault. Amy is a sustainable textile industry writer. She works as the sustainability and communications Director for Botanical Colors as well as the Communications Lead for TS Designs. Amy also co-runs the Southeastern New England Fibershed, which has goals to create a digestible dialogue with farmers about climate change in order to create a regional supply chain that supports Massachusetts and Rhode Island textile businesses. Show notes: w...
Feb 08, 2021•58 min
We have a special episode for you today, a conversation between myself, LaChaun, and Maggie Putnam, that will be a peek behind the scenes at GIST Yarn and what we’ve been up to. Maggie Putnam Studio is a one-woman creative office that crafts refined brand systems for conscious, intentional brands. And for the last seven months, we have been working on redesigning our GIST Yarn and Weave Podcast brand identity and rebuilding our website to better reflect the company we’ve become, and to better sh...
Jan 27, 2021•30 min
Our team put together a really special episode for you to ring out this year, sharing some of our favorite customer stories that came into our email inbox this year. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-131
Dec 28, 2020•36 min
In this week’s episode, LaChaun is speaking with Lydia Wendt, the Founder and Design Director of the California Cloth Foundry. Originally from New York, Lydia trained at the Fashion Institute of Technology and worked with some of America's top fashion designers and brands, including Tom Ford for Perry Ellis America, Calvin Klein, Jones New York, and The North Face. Before founding CCF in 2014, she was a member of the faculty of the Academy of Art University's internationally recognized fashion d...
Dec 07, 2020•44 min
In this week’s episode, LaChaun is speaking with Sarah Gotowka the founder and director of Luna Fiber Studio, A textile studio specializing in weaving and natural dyes, rooted in sustainability and social justice. Sarah is a Korean adoptee and also works part-time for the Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of New York. There she mentors youth adoptees, and advocates around trans-racial adoption issues. Weaving and dyeing have been a powerful healing tool in Sarah’s journey of exploring her roo...
Nov 23, 2020•44 min
Hello, I hope all is well. Before I get into this week’s episode I would like to start out by expressing my excitement and gratitude for the recent election results. I’m glad we voted and I’m excited about the changes that are to come! While we are on the topic of the future I’m excited to introduce you all to a new project that we are working on at Gist. As part of my new role at Gist as director of partnerships and collaborations, I’m working on our very first Open Call for Gist Yarn Pattern D...
Nov 18, 2020•3 min
In this week’s episode, LaChaun and Sarah give a short personal account of why they feel it is important to vote in the 2020 Electoral Campaign. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-vote2020
Nov 02, 2020•9 min
In this week’s episode, LaChaun is speaking to Torrey Beckham. Torrey is a Texas-born Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist who weaves, uses plants, and many other creative mediums as outlets of expression. Torrey’s palette, texture choices, and subject matters all have their roots in Torrey’s personal experiences growing up Black. Torrey’s work aim's to create a space where Black and Queer folks encounter the work, seeing themselves in the lines, and feel "home" emanating from the textures. w...
Oct 26, 2020•31 min
In this week’s episode, I’m speaking with Indigo Farmer, Textile Artist & Dressmaker Leigh Magar. Leigh’s textile design studio Madame Magar is inspired by art, nature, folkways, and history. Her studio embraces a seed to stitch design philosophy that explores the history, a rich yet tangled past of place; while living and working on a former indigo plantation in Charleston SC. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-127
Oct 19, 2020•34 min
In this week’s episode, LaChaun is speaking with Chawne Kimber an African-American mathematician and quilter, known for expressing her political activism in her quilts. In Chawne’s quilts, she interprets traditional forms in an improvisational style using vibrant modern colors of commercially available American-farmed, processed, and woven cotton. Some of her designs are geometric romps that emphasize the complex forms of negative space that naturally arise, while others utilize unusually small ...
Oct 12, 2020•35 min
In this week's episode, LaChaun is speaking with Jessie Mordine Young. Jessie is a textile curator, teacher of traditional textile techniques, and maker living in New York City. She is an MA candidate in the History of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City. She also graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) with a dual degree in Art History and Studio Art in Fiber and Material Studies. Show notes: www.gistyarn.co...
Oct 05, 2020•31 min
This week on the podcast LaChaun is speaking with Lauren B. Fay the founder and executive director of the New Fashion Initiative. The New Fashion Initiative is a foundation creating interdisciplinary education and communications initiatives to promote circulatory collaboration, and accountability in the fashion industry. Lauren Fay is a connector and producer committed to creating a paradigm shift in the fashion industry. As a sustainability consultant, she’s developed initiatives and strategic ...
Sep 28, 2020•48 min
In this week’s episode, Sarah is speaking with Angela Kelly and Kim McCollum the founders of Gather Textiles. Gather is a yarn shop and textile studio in Edmonton Alberta. Their aim is to bring people together to exchange ideas, learn from one another, and to celebrate making things with our hands. We are thrilled that Gather is a Canadian stockist for Gist Yarn carrying our lines of Duet and Mallo. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-123
Sep 21, 2020•36 min
In this week’s episode, I’m really excited to speak with Kenya Miles. Kenya is a textile artist, farmer, and the alchemist behind the Traveling Miles Studio. Kenya has a wealth of knowledge and expertise in natural textiles which she has applied to the Blue Light Junction Project, a natural dye studio, alternative color lab, retail space, dye garden & educational facility in central Baltimore, Maryland. Show notes: www.gistyarn.com/episode-122
Sep 14, 2020•1 hr 15 min
In this week’s episode, I’m speaking with Sydni Gause, an interdisciplinary artist and Adjunct Professor in Sculpture at Alfred University. Sydni works with an array of materials that she uses in her sculpture, installation, and fiber-based practice. She uses her work as a means to respond to issues between power structures and gender inequality. Working with text and gendered iconography Gause exposes her oppressive truths and begins to challenge the viewers' conditioned constructs of both a wo...
Sep 07, 2020•44 min
