Mending A Ruin: Textiles and Healing

Mending a Ruin: Exploring Textile Experimentation and Conservation Through a Lens of Healing  

Non-Members: $5.00
FWM Members: Free admission with member code

Join us for a panel discussion with FWM Curator Karen Patterson, Textile Conservator Laura Mina, Psychotherapist and Art Therapist Kelsey Jordan, and Art Therapist Sarah Kodish-Eskind as they discuss the parallels between mending, making and healing.

During Samara Golden’s 2019-2020 residency at FWM, our Studio staff researched historic textile archives, replicated ocular migraine static, screenprinted optical illusions, and conducted countless tests with thermochromic ink. All of this was done, as an attempt to translate the emotional states of loss, anxiety, and ruin into a textile pattern. These experiments prompted a deeper inquiry into the ways that textiles can express ruin through their wear and also healing through the ways they have been mended. 

Bios: 

Kelsey Jordan (she/her), Psychotherapist, ATR-P

A graduate of Drexel University’s Creative Arts Therapies program, Kelsey Jordan's clinical background is rooted in Art Therapy and Counseling. She firmly believes that creative expression in all of its forms is inherently healing, and recognizes Art Therapy beyond the act of creating visual art. In her clinical work, Jordan encourages clients to view Art Therapy as simply the act of thinking creatively, abstractly, and metaphorically because when doing so it enables one to better understand, discuss, or revise their life narrative.

Jordan's identity as a Black woman is woven into her practice and informs her areas of focus. As a person with multiple marginalized identities, she greatly values the role of multiculturalism within a relationship. Centering multiculturalism within her work is a rich experience allowing for: honoring and affirming one’s diverse identities, processing how identities influence one’s lived experiences, and exploring the many ways in which one’s identities intersect with and are understood in context to the identities of others.

Sarah Kodish-Eskind (she/they), MA, ATR , Registered Art Therapist, LPC Candidate 

Laura Mina (she/hers), Associate Conservator of Textiles & Head of Textile Lab, Winterthur Museum; Affiliated Assistant Professor, Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation 

Laura Mina joined Winterthur as the Associate Conservator of Textiles and Head of Textile Lab in 2017. She is responsible for the preservation, treatment, exhibition, and enhanced understanding of textiles in the collection, which has particular strength in printed textiles, needlework, furnishing fabrics, and quilts. As Affiliated Assistant Professor, Mina teaches textile conservation in the WUDPAC Master’s Program. Before joining Winterthur, she worked with The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Mina received an M.A. in Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice from the Fashion Institute of Technology with a specialization in conservation, and a B.S. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University. Her research interests include conservation ethics, the cultural contexts of textiles, and the chemistry of textile cleaning. 

Karen Patterson (she/hers), Curator, The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM)

Karen Patterson joined FWM as their inaugural curator in July 2019. Prior to this appointment she was the Senior Curator at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC), curating over fifty exhibitions, including major exhibitions such as Lenore Tawney: Mirror of The Universe, Ray Yoshida’s Museum of Extraordinary Values, Ebony G.Patterson: Dead Treez, several critically-reviewed site specific installations such as Joy Feasley and Paul Swenbeck: Out, Out, Phosphene Candle, Things are What We Encounter: Dr.Charles Smith + Heather Hart. Her focus at JMKAC was also geared towards the curation of the Arts Center’s premier collection of folk art, self-taught art, and artist environments, work that culminated in a collaborative 2017 collections-based exhibitions series, The Road Less Traveled, which received praise by Hyperallergic as the year’s top exhibition. She completed her BA in folklore studies at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada, and her Masters of Art Administration at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Publications include Lenore Tawney: Mirror of the Universe (2019), Eugene Von Bruenchenhein: Mythologies (2017), Lee Godie: Self-Portraits (2015), and Ray Yoshida’s Museum of Extraordinary Values (2013).