Cordage Making Workshop

Visual and teaching artist Chloë Hight will be creating a woven sculpture with natural material as a part of The Exquisite Gorge Project II: Fiber Arts in partnership with Maryhill Museum of Art. This summer, Chloë will lead hands-on weaving classes for children and adults in collaboration with The History Museum, Columbia Center for the Arts, and Arts in Education of the Gorge as an extension of this project. Participants will learn how to make cordage (rope) using local plant fibers to create lengths of woven material and explore the wide variety of plants that can be used for basket weaving. These community engaged weaving circles will inform and inspire Chloë's creative process in creating the art piece for the Exquisite Gorge Project II. The completed sculpture will be shown at The History Museum in July.

A culminating Festival of Fiber Arts will be held Saturday, August 6, 2022 at Maryhill Museum of Art, where each free-standing “exquisite corpse” section, 11 in total, will be brought together to reveal a continuous 66-foot- long sculpture.

Class Description:

Cordage is a gathering of fiber twisted together to create a more resilient form. In this class Chloë Hight will lead students in making lengths of cordage using a variety of locally gleaned plant materials like daylily, cattail, iris, and Himalayan blackberry (plant selection is seasonally dependent). We will explore the significance that cordage carries as a traditional hand technology that is an innate part of the human story and our connection to place.