06/06/2026
In just two weeks, the Explorations in Traditional & Contemporary Feltmaking workshop will be starting — and another spot just opened!
This post is devoted to some details about the incredible and beautiful fiber studio, Paimärire, where it will be held.
Paimärire (Pie-Mar-Re-Ray) — a Māori name meaning “peace and serenity” is the Fiber Arts Studio at the s’gʷi gʷi ʔ altxʷ:House of Welcome — Indigenous Cultural Arts Campus in Olympia, WA.
The building itself is a living testament to a cross-Pacific friendship between the Longhouse and Māori artists that began in the late 1990s. Designed to suggest an overturned canoe on the beach, its architecture was shaped by New Zealand’s premiere Māori sculptor Lyonel Grant, who spent years collaborating on a space where the roofline traces both sides of the Pacific — the West Coast and Aotearoa.
Every surface tells a story. The entrance features a Mana Wahine mask honoring the power of women, welcome figures modeled after ancient bone pendants from the Salish Sea, and bargeboards carved by a team of Indigenous artists from Makah, Skokomish, Quinault, and Squaxin Island nations. Inside, six tukutuku panels — some woven in New Zealand and gifted across the ocean — line the walls alongside mats woven in red cedar and New Zealand flax. Beneath your feet, a carved granite Mauri stone represents the life force of the land itself.
Written on the bargeboards is a Māori proverb: He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people. There is no more fitting place to gather, make, and learn.
Read the last post for workshop details, link in bio to register — and act fast.
