Tour open studios across five Chicago neighborhoods. These creative participants working with and adjacent to textiles make up the life-blood of Chicago’s fiber community, including The Weaving Mill, 1733, The Chicago Weaving School, the Passementerie Mill, and the studio of weaver Melissa Leandro. Refer to this link for a digital guide on the day of.
Please refer to each individual studio description for information on parking availability, limited indoor capacities, and other safety precautions.
(Courtesy of The Weaving Mill)
Parking is available. Masks and social-distancing required. Follow them on Instagram at @theweavingmill.
The Weaving Mill is an artist-run industrial weaving studio that blends design, production, textile education and research-based practice. They produce small runs of fabrics, home goods and apparel, self-publish zines and other research-based publications, host an annual experimental artist residency program, and in partnership with Envision Unlimited, run textile education programs for adults with developmental disabilities. In all these realms, they aim to fill the space between the hand and industrially made and bring the mechanics of textile production into wider view.
(Courtesy of 1733)
Masks required. Parking is available behind the building in a gated lot. The gate can be open remotely when someone buzzes unit 202 on the intercom. Signage will direct visitors from the parking lot to the studio. Alternatively the intercom at the Lake St door can be used by visitors on foot. Indoor capacity is 15 people at a time. Annotated map below.
1733 was founded in Chicago in 2014. The brand designs and manufactures bags, accessories, and home goods in-house as well as with other US based factories. We strive to create durable, functional, and beautiful products that push the envelope on what is possible with domestic manufacturing. Our hope is that these products and processes encourage our customers to think about how and why products are made and to always be considering those factors when making purchases of anything.
Follow 1733 on Instagram at @seventeenthirtythree.
(Courtesy of Chicago Weaving School)
An attendant will open the front door for visitors who are fully masked over the nose and mouth. Chicago Weaving School has an indoor capacity of 15 people at a time. There is metered parking on Irving Park Rd., and free parking on nearby residential streets like Keeler, Byron, and Grace. The school is one block from the Irving Park Blue line stop, and the Metra Burlington line.
The Chicago Weaving School is one of the few places in the country dedicated to full-time, ongoing, weaving instruction. Beginning-through-advanced weavers come to the space for weekly classes and community. The large studio space is filled with over 100 looms, as well as warping boards, warping mills, swifts, shuttles, winders, cones, and skeins. Visitors can see examples of handwoven baskets that are in monthly basketry workshops, the school’s textile gallery called The Wayback features the work of Chicago Weaving School students, as well as outside textile artists. There will be a loom available for visitors to weave on as well.
Follow Chicago Weaving School on Instagram @chicagoweavingschool.
(Courtesy of Kathleen Neary)
Please be sure to dress appropriately for the Passementerie Mill, as there are large and heavy machinery operating in an old space.
(Courtesy of Melissa Leandro)
Free street parking available on Grand or Keller Avenue. Hand sanitizer will be available. Indoor capacity is 15 people at a time. Follow Melissa on Instagram at @melissaleandro89.
Melissa Leandro (b. 1989, Miami, FL) explores her cultural identity and family memories to create vibrantly layered, topographical textile works filled with her drawn and collected imagery. Her textile works are vibrant, animated and heavily layered through traditional and non-traditional processes of stitching, quilting, weaving and batik dyeing. By mirroring often personal moments of daily life, she manifests thoughts of family history, remembered childhood fantasies and nostalgic cultural ephemera. These works are specific to Leandro’s hybrid culture as a first-generation US Latinx artist moving between Costa Rica, Miami, Chicago and abroad.
Leandro holds a BFA and MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and is currently teaching at the Art Institute as a Lecturer and Advisor. She was awarded the Artadia Prize (2021), the Craft Fellowship Grant, from the Illinois Arts Council (2020), the Wingate Artist Fellowship from Vermont Studio Center Residency (2019), the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship (2017), and the Luminarts Fellowship (2017) from the Luminarts Cultural Foundation, Union League of Chicago. She has exhibited at The University Club of Chicago, The University of Nebraska Omaha, Rockford University (Rockford, IL), the Wright Museum of Art (Beloit, WI), DePaul Art Museum (Chicago, IL), Andrew Rafacz Gallery(Chicago, IL), Frieze Art Fair NYC (2020+2021) among a variety of other venues.
(Image: 2019 Chicago Textile Week of visitors to The Weaving Mill, browsing for artist-woven textile goods.)
