June 2022
Kelly Manjula Koza joined WARP in 2020. Her background includes 30 years of volunteering with an NGO based in India as well as corporate work in technology, communications, and program management, and she senses an emerging connection between gizmo-based technology overload and the rising desire for handmade items, especially in fiber arts.
Kelly works with the tessitrici artigianali— the women who maintain the art of traditional handweaving on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. Seeking to preserve, protect, promote, encourage, and advance the tessitrici artigianali and the arts, culture, and heritage of Sardinia in a sustainable manner, she founded Sardinian Arts in 2013. In 2017, she produced and curated Sardinian Textiles: An Exhibit of Handwoven Art in San Francisco, which included related events such as Intrecciati, an intercultural fiber arts project. Kelly’s documentary I Want to Weave the Weft of Time features the few remaining hand weavers of Samugheo, and she has started films about weavers working in two other areas/traditions in Sardinia.
While Kelly gave many online presentations during the pandemic, plans for more in-person shows, trunk shows, presentations, and tours were slowed, but are again budding! Click the links below to watch recordings of the chat sessions.
The video recording of this Fireside Chat is available to logged-in WARP members only.