Connecting with Young Members

Nicole Giacomantonio, our young WARP member from Nova Scotia, shares her experience at the annual meeting in Decorah, her reasons for embracing our group of textile enthusiasts and her hopes for the future…Judy Newland

An Adventure in Iowa

Iowa was beautiful, and Decorah was truthfully a place I never expected to find myself. I thought it great to have the opportunity to go out of the way to spend time in such a lovely town. I loved experiencing the textile culture specific to the area, especially visiting the local yarn shop, I googled it before even arriving in Decorah. I probably spent 40 minutes in there agonizing over how many skeins of locally dyed yarn I could justify buying (I showed amazing restraint and settled on just one). I found the speakers this year to be very compelling. The Alice Brown Memorial Scholarship winners gave incredible talks, and hearing them speak was a highlight of the meeting for me.

The visit to the Seed Savers Exchange truly resonated with me – I have very strong family ties, and a lot of our tradition is surrounding food. Passing seeds on to family members is such a romantic tradition; I was inspired by the stories of veggies being brought overseas with moving families. I connect this with my interest in conservation as well. The seeds are important objects of cultural heritage that should be preserved for other generations to enjoy.

Why Weave A Real Peace? Support is Everything!

I was overwhelmed with the amount of support I received from the WARP organization and from its individual members in Oaxaca last year. The connections that developed during that meeting were, and continue to be, very inspiring and enriching as I explore the paths I can take in working with textiles in my own life. It was important to me to keep those relationships strong and to show my appreciation for the organization and the people that showed me so much love right from the beginning. Not to mention the fact that the meetings are so fun and engaging, with so many opportunities to learn from and along side those who share my passion for textiles.

The connections I made during the two conferences I attended had an incredible affect on me, and I was honoured to receive so much encouragement from WARP members. I want to stay involved in WARP for many reasons. I want to show WARP the same support that the organization has shown me over the past two years. I also want to help the organization to grow and adapt, to diversify and to usher in new and younger members. Being a member of WARP provides a great opportunity to explore the many and varying ways of working with textiles and cultural heritage, and to begin exploring ways I can act as an advocate for the preservation and conservation of textile traditions both at home and abroad.

Looking Ahead

I hope for growth and diversification of the WARP organization. I also hope to keep engaging in conversations about conservation, preservation, and the responsibility we as textile enthusiasts and artists have to the owners and makers of the ethnographic textiles and cultural heritage that we support and celebrate, but that is not necessarily our own. I hope that we as an organization work to celebrate these traditions of culture and art, but also think critically of our involvement in it.

I am in the middle of creating a naturally dyed quilt. I was hoping to finish it by the end of the summer… but here we are in mid August and I’ve barely finished the top. Oh well. However, I have almost finished knitting a sweater! So, cross your fingers that I finish SOMETHING by the end of August.

I’ll be moving to Scotland in the fall! I was accepted to the Master of Textile Conservation program at the University of Glasgow. A big move, but I am very excited.

Textile conservation students at the University of Glasgow.

 

Nicole is managing our Instagram account. Look for important information on this coming soon….

 

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