BY KAREN BOSSICK

Throughout the ages, weaving has served not only as a means of clothing mankind and providing warm blankets to snuggle in, but it also has served as a platform for activism.

The Sun Valley Museum of Art explores that concept with its new exhibit “Intertwined: Weaving in Community.” The exhibition opens at 5 tonight—Friday, April 5--with a reception at The Museum in Ketchum. Three artists—Sara Siestreem, Tanya Aguiniga and Natalie Godinez—will be on hand to discuss their work.

The exhibition continues through June 15 at the Museum at 191 5th St. East in Ketchum.

Among the artists whose work is featured is Sara Siestreem, a 48-year-old Portland, Ore., woman who has taught traditional Native weaving to Oregon’s Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw people to preserve indigenous knowledge that was nearly lost during the 19th century. Her works in the exhibition, include a newly commissioned sculpture made from ceramic, fiber and natural materials, as well as woven, 3-D printed and cast ceramic baskets.

A Hanis Coos tribal member from the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, she grew up in the Lower Umpqua River Valley of Oregon and in Portland, learning arts from family elders and formal colleges at U.S. art schools. Seistreem has taught studio arts at Portland State University, pre-college painting at Pacific Northwest College of Art and tribal museum studies at the Northwest Indian College in Washington.

Tanya Aguiniga, born in San Diego and raised in Tijuana, Mexico, draws on Mesoamerican and Indigenous Andean weaving traditions to make sculptures focused on terracotta hands and other body parts. She considers her woven figures portraits.

Natalie Godinez, a Los Angeles artist working with textiles and printmaking, is working with The Museum to develop a community-based fiber artwork project in the Wood River Valley. It is inspired by AMBOS’s Border Quipu/Quipu Fronterizo, a sculptural fiber work made by those living along the U.S.-Mexican border.

AMBOS, an acronym for Art Made Between Opposite Sides, was founded in 2016 to address immigration issues at the border through craft and humanitarian aid. Random people were invited to add a knot to a quipu, an Andean, pre-Columbian system of recording history on colored threads. The knots were eventually displayed on a billboard at the border of San Diego and Tijuana.

The Museum offered a teen workshop, a workshop on natural dyes ahead of the exhibition and will offer a workshop with The Alliance of Idaho at 10 a.m. today.

OTHER EXHIBITION EVENTS:

April 11, Thursday—5:30 p.m. Exhibition Tour. Free.

April 12, Friday—Afternoon Art program for families with kids of all ages at the Hailey House at 2nd and Pine Street in Hailey. 1:30 p.m. Free.

May 3, Friday—Afternoon Art Program for families with kids of all ages at The Museum in Ketchum. 1:30 p.m. Free.

May 10, Friday—Afternoon Art Program for families and kids at the Hailey House. 1:30 p.m. Free.

May 23, Thursday—Evening Tour at 5:30 p.m. at The Museum in Ketchum.

June 13, Thursday. Evening Tour at 5:30 at The Museum in Ketchum. Free.

Learn more at https://svmoa.org/exhibitions/2024/intertwined.