The Public Gallery @ Civic Center Library

Scottsdale Public Art in partnership with the Scottsdale Public Library present exhibitions and educational programming that strengthens awareness of the arts and stimulates community dialogue.

INTERWOVEN: Telaraña Fiber Arts Guild

During the pandemic lockdown of 2020, the Telaraña Fiber Arts Guild proposed a challenge to keep their members engaged with one another and celebrate Arizona’s beauty. The resulting fiber arts, and the visual images that inspired them, comprise this exhibition.

Art and nature affirm and celebrate our place in this world. We are all connected, and art can help us remember this. The uplifting act of creating, when inspired by Arizona’s landscape, is what helped these artists get through the isolation of the pandemic lockdown of 2020.

The Telaraña Fiber Arts Guild proposed a challenge to keep their members engaged with one another and celebrate Arizona’s beauty. They took images of Arizona’s plants, canyons, lakes, and skies to inspire their creations, using their chosen fiber art techniques.

Telaraña Fiber Arts Guild promotes all fiber arts, including weaving, spinning, basketry, knitting, crochet, lacemaking, felting, dyeing, and more. This welcoming group includes artists with a wide range of experience, from beginners to advanced. Telaraña means “spider web” in Spanish and symbolizes the connections felt with others who love the fiber arts.

Since 1978, the Telaraña Weavers and Spinners Guild has been affiliated with the Handweavers Guild of America and the Arizona Federation of Weavers and Spinners Guilds. For more about the guild, go to Telarana.org.

The Telaraña Inspiration Challenge

During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Telaraña Fiber Arts Guild launched an “Inspiration Challenge” to keep each other connected and to celebrate Arizona during isolation. The unifying theme of the project is: “Arizona’s landscape inspires all who live and visit here.” Participants turned to visual images of stunning Arizona landscapes as a source of inspiration to create a fiber-related work of art. Each piece consists of three parts: the visual image that served as the source of inspiration, the fiber creation inspired by that image, and a statement by each artist describing the relationship between the two. INTERWOVEN shows the diverse talents of Telaraña’s members.