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I am heartsick over the decision to drop fiber arts from your University. It seems only obvious the decision making is by those who are truly clueless. I beg you to reverse this decision. Why? Because had it not been for University, I might not have had the 50 years of business opportunities. I was enriched by the awakening of what fiber arts consisted. Truly, a lifelong adventure into discovery. This passion has carried me to the darkest corners of the earth. YES! To Ethiopia to set up a weaving program for orphans. To Cambodia…the forgotten land…living at a compound of orphans and teaching them to weave.

You absolutely cannot imagine what your decision will do and what a negative effect you will cause. I beg you to be open to changing your decision.

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I truly believe that you are making a huge mistake in dropping fiber arts from your university program. Are you not aware of the proliferation of fiber based events in every part of our country? I have been a fiber arts vendor for over twenty years,and am astonished by the number of women and men who have become involved in the industry,and especially by the large number of kids in their teens and twenties who are eagerly joining the ranks of weavers,spinners, knittersand felters . Fiber arts encourages the use of natural materials in place of synthetics, and encompasses so much of the”green” movement taking place in the design and clothing industries. I do hope you will reconsider your decision , and continue to provide students with the opportunity to achieve mastery in the field of fiber arts.

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I am an MFA graduate from UNT 2007. I taught some of the fibers classes there. I am a practicing fiber artist and art educator. I exhibit my fiber art internationally, teach fiber art internationally, am in books/mags/zines/interviews and features of my works in fiber, I am writing a book about fiber artists/wearable artists/Cosplay and Fosshape, and I used free motion machine embroidery to create my published children’s book. Fiber arts utilizes every art material and discipline from other areas of art, from painting (dyeing, solar dyeing, silkscreen, hand painting, silk painting and more) to sculpture (fiber sculptures, knotting, netting, construction, armatures, plaster, woven dimensional pieces, basketry and more) to installation (yarn bombing, creating communal spaces, recycled mixed media environments, viewer-interactive, kinetic and more) to photography (digital images to silkscreen, manipulated images for quilting, images for heat transfer methods) to sewing and the hand arts (free motion machine embroidery, tatting, hand embroidery, crochet, knitting and more) and the list just goes on and on. Taking fibers means that you are a part of everything that is visual art! This is an uninformed decision on UNT’s part, or perhaps an exclusionary decision that is an erroneous one. I beg you to reconsider. The graduates who are successful are many, from Lesli Robertson and her fantastic outreach works in many countries, to Anila Quayyum Agha‎ and her prize winning lit environment/installation works, the many grads working in the textile industries, among many, many other talented people. Find another building, find the $, we beg of you. This is an important program!

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