Co-Chairs: Inez Brooks-Myers and Susan Tselos
The theme of the symposium was “Appropriation, Acculturation, Transformation.” Emphasis was on the way the human activities (such as trade or war) influence the production, aesthetics, materials, etc. of textiles.
Tours included the studios of well-known artists such as Lia Cook, Kay Sekimachi, or Anna Lisa Hedstrom, the Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and an exhibition of the work of legendary Native American basket weaver, Julia Parker, in Walnut Creek.
From the baskets of the Pomo, Wintu, Miwok, and Hupa people, to the time of the ranchos, when horseback riders could be identified by the pattern of their serapes, to the California Gold Rush, when trading ships plied the California/Mexican coast full of pierced, painted or embroidered fans, embroidered shawls and rich damasks from China and the Philippines, textiles have been important to California in general and to the San Francisco Bay Area in particular. More recently, this is where Dorothy Liebes became a textile star at the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island, 1939-40. Noted University of California scholars such as Lila M. O’Neale and Ann H. Gayton encouraged textile research, and Ed Rossbach, Lea Miller, Lydia van Gelder and Lillian Elliot are some of the gifted artists/teachers who inspired what became a textile revolution during the 1970s.
–Inez Brooks-Myers
