Fiber arts studio needs a new spool

Published 2:00 pm Wednesday, November 13, 2019

When Clatsop Community College closed its fiber arts programs in 2004, instructor Margaret Thierry helped save many of the looms, spinners and other equipment.

In 2010, she and Astoria Visual Arts formed the Astoria Fiber Arts Academy, the region’s nonprofit educational and outreach group for weavers, knitters and spinners. The academy has offered a studio since 2015.

Thierry died nearly three years ago, leaving fellow thread artists to carry on her legacy. They now seek a new room for their looms after being asked to leave their Duane Street location by the end of the year.

Jo Ann Snead, the president of the studio’s board, said it has received support and a sweetheart of a deal from building owners Charlotte Bruhn and Margaret Nikkila. But the owners gave them three month’s notice in September to move out so they could renovate the space.

“The thing that’s a little unfortunate about this is that we’re thriving right now,” she said. “We’re teaching more classes than we’ve ever taught. Our online presence is more palatable than it’s ever been. So it’s not like we’re going, ‘Oh well, we were going to give up anyway.’”

The studio includes a main room filled with yarn spinners and various sizes and styles of looms used to weave cloth and tapestries . The group teaches weaving, spinning, knitting and dyeing techniques to the public and visiting groups of children. In a back room is one of the most extensive fiber arts reference libraries on the West Coast, Snead said.

Attached to the studio is a store open on the weekends selling members’ handmade goods, from ice-dyed shirts to rovings, the bundles of fabric used for making yarn. The profits go to support the studio, which makes most of its money from teaching.

The fiber arts studio sees the move as an opportunity to find a smaller, more appropriate space, said LeAnn Meyer, the group’s vice president. Parking has gotten tight on Duane Street, where the emergence of drinking establishments has left the fiber arts studio feeling out of place.

“If we were only given an espresso machine and a license, we probably could do real well,” Snead jokes.

The group wants about 1,000 square feet of clean, naturally bright space for around $850 a month on the periphery of Astoria with easy access for their equipment and the spinners who come from throughout the region for classes and other gatherings. They need it by the middle of next month to facilitate a move out of the current location.

Keeping the studio alive is about continuing Thierry’s vision and the Scandinavian heritage of communal weaving. In the 1950s, six Finnish families brought their looms when they settled in Astoria, according to one bit of history on the studio’s website. They set up a common area where they could weave, a Scandinavian custom, and created the Clatsop Weavers and Spinners Guild, which still meets at the studio.

Thierry’s fingerprints are all over the studio, which has become known for events like the yarn bomb covering signs, benches, garbage cans and other public infrastructure in colorful knitted sleeves. The studio was once contracted by the Friends of Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood to create an exhibit of blankets from the lodging’s opening in 1937.

A poem by Thierry, “Life is But a Dream,” hangs on the wall next to two of her woven pieces near the studio’s entrance.

“She’s left us quite a legacy,” Snead said. “We hope we can take care of it.”