In this course we will examine the expanded field of textiles through contemporary artists, exhibitions, collectives, and art movements. Artists are currently using this powerful material to address historically maligned issues around care, relationships, site-specificity, ecology and labor practices in regards to materials, and to talk about ancestry, community, and intergenerational space. This class provides opportunities to understand contemporary arts practices, develop archives of supporting materials, experiment with different mediums and ideas, and give feedback to each other on developing bodies of work. Using contemporary artists as the jump off point for many of our inquiries - we will experiment with many types of concept-driven making including both analog and digital mediums. Students will write, reflect, and respond to the content of the class through weekly zines to document their experiences, and use these reflections to produce a culminating final project. Our conversations will be framed by the work of artists such as Faith Ringgold, Billie Zangewa, Christopher Myers, Bisa Butler, Guadalupe Maravilla, Diedrick Brackens, Lina Puerta, Duane Linklater, Andrea Zittel, Sandford Biggers, Saya Woolfalk, and look at exhibitions like “The New Bend” curated by Legacy Russell, and “With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972-1985” organized by Anna Katz, Curator, with Rebecca Lowery, Assistant Curator, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.