We the People: Intro to Quilting
Taught by River Takada
Tuesday, September 1 at 6:00pm
As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, Duke Arts Create is offering a series of hands-on workshops that ask: “What is an ‘American’ art form?”
The answer emerges where histories and cultures intersect—where materials, techniques, and stories cross one another like the threads of a woven cloth.
As Anna Wallace, Duke Arts student engagement manager and director of Duke Arts Create, developed this fall’s workshop schedule, she kept returning to the words of renowned textile artist and educator Anni Albers. Albers taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina from 1933 to 1949, and in her book On Weaving, she described the relationship between threads: “One system of threads, the warp, crosses another one, the weft, at right angles, and the manner of intersecting forms the different weaves.” The metaphor proved a fitting guide for Duke Arts Create’s participation in We the People, a Duke and Durham initiative exploring the nation’s evolving identity through public events, coursework, and conversations.
Wallace extended Albers’ metaphor, asking, “How best could we intersect warp and weft, or technique and history, material and story, in order to celebrate the people of this country’s past and present in all their beautiful diversity, while still interrogating the flaws or snags in the weave?”
This fall’s workshops answer that question through the hands-on experience this popular program is known for: short, intensive dives into artistic craft, history, and sustainable practice.
Students will learn practices associated with early American artisans and traditions rooted in this land long before the nation’s founding. Participants can weave pine needles into a gourd bowl with Catawba artist Teresa Dunlap, and learn the fundamentals of weaving on a mini loom with Durham artist Amelia Shull. Several workshops explore the practice of quilting, which has deep ties to the United States and to indigenous cultures in the Americas and is reflected in the visual identity of the We the People initiative. Textile artists River Takada and Kimberley Cartwright will lead introductory quilting workshops where participants create their own hand-sown improvised mini quilt, and Morgan Riker will offer a no-sew collage quilting version of the workshop.
Aligning with We the People’s emphasis on the nation’s evolving identity, Duke Arts Create will celebrate techniques brought to this country by immigrants. Classes like Sashiko (Japanese geometric embroidery), Papel Picado (cut paper), and Mandala showcase the cultural arts of Japanese American, Mexican American, and Indian American artists.
Several workshops are inspired by the exhibition of the Declaration of Independence, which will be at the Durham Public Library from September 8-20 before moving to the Nasher Museum of Art from September 24–January 3. Workshop participants will learn to screen print their own copy of the Declaration of Independence and write zines exploring themes inspired by the We the People initiative. In a Duke faculty-led workshop, historian Thavolia Glymph will lead a reading and discussion of the Declaration of Independence before Leonid Tsvetkov will demonstrate the making of iron gall ink—the same ink that was used to pen the original document. Participants will walk away with a greater understanding of the document, and a screen-printed copy signed in iron gall ink with their own name.
Duke Arts Create is also proud to join the Nasher Museum as they celebrate their exhibitions Explosion! Bay Area Punk and Turn the Volume Up!, which will be on view alongside the Declaration exhibition this fall. Writer Shelbi Polk will teach the practice of Black Out poetry, making something new from words already inked on a page, directly on screen-printed copies of the Declaration of Independence. This is an opportunity to engage directly with the text and to imagine what the future of our country could look like. Guests will also have the opportunity to make protest banners with provided textile supplies.
With these public art workshops, Duke Arts Create invites the Duke and Durham communities to see themselves as part of an ongoing American tapestry woven from many hands, strengthened by diverse traditions, and still being made.
Duke Arts Create workshops resume starting August 26, 2026!
Interested in registering for a workshop? Registration opens every Friday morning at 9 a.m. for the following week’s events. Explore all workshops below.
