How to make textiles hip again? Recruit young artists to push them to their outer limits.

by Ursula Gullow . portrait by Matt Rose

Libby O’Bryan remembers the first outfit she ever sewed: a blue and white striped pocket tee and a pair of too-tight blue shorts. “They were more like biker shorts,” she says, laughing. She was only eight, and she had help from her mother, but you might say that first experience sowed—or sewed, rather— the seeds for her lifetime of work in fashion and textiles.

This winter, O’Bryan, 34, is one of several mixed-media artists in a high-profile textiles exhibit at the South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem. On the opening night of the exhibit, Out of Fashion, O’Bryan performed a piece called “Sewed In,” during which she literally sewed herself up. Sitting inside a bubble of fabric with her sewing machine, she sewed furiously until the bubble collapsed and the material clung to her like a second skin. She ended her performance by breaking out of the wrap, but the performance brought to mind images of suffocation and horrific sweatshops. “I do get a little panicky when I’m in there,“ O’Bryan admits.

“Sewed In” was one of several performance pieces O’Bryan developed as a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago starting in 2008. It’s a way to illustrate, as she puts it, “a physical manifestation of what the sewing machine and I do together.” Like O’Bryan’s other large-scale conceptual performance pieces, “Sewed In” explores the way individuals are implicated in the socio-political and manufactured worlds around them.

She arrived on the artistic side of her career in a roundabout way. Sometime after graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, she apprenticed with the interdisciplinary artist and weaver Anne Wilson in Chicago. Years later, after an MBA, she worked with avant-garde clothing designer Gary Graham in New York City. Both artists still inform her art immensely. Wilson taught her the value of a research-based approach to creative work. In other words, how to stay organized and methodical in the midst of a chaotic studio. Now, O’Bryan keeps that in mind as she does both commercial products and apparel through her company, Western Carolina Sewing Company, and artistic ventures like the SECCA exhibit.

These days, Graham owns a glitzy storefront in trendy Tribeca and has rolled out several lines of chic, arty women’s clothing sold worldwide. But less than ten years ago, Graham was still operating out of a snug basement studio. “He won an opportunity to show his line at Bryant Park, and that was pivotal for his business and my life,” O’Bryan says. She continued to work alongside Graham for three years as a production manager, assisting him in the expansion of his business. Once the business became large enough, O’Bryan stepped aside to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In art school, O’Bryan stepped out of her industry-focused fashion training. “I wanted to make something you couldn’t put a value on,” she says. “I wanted to make experiences, not objects.” Still, her current life is a balancing act, as she collaborates with Bethanne Knudson and Stephan Michelson on product development at Hendersonville’s Oriole Mill. In her first six months working there and sharing space inside the 72,000-square-foot former vegetable cannery, O’Bryan has helped brainstorm new ways to get the mill’s high-quality throws and bedding out to more people—and thus get more of their five Jacquard looms and other weaving equipment cranking. In an age when most textile manufacturing has moved overseas, the Oriole’s owners took the unusual step of letting designers who contract with the mill come in and control the weaving. “It is an unheard of relationship that you can ever have access to industry on that level,” O’Bryan says, explaining that, even in high-end clothing manufacturing, sewing operations usually take place overseas.

This fall, O’Bryan and her architect boyfriend Brandon Pass decided they loved the mill so much they wanted to get married in it. On October 8, she and her longtime sweetheart got married in the weaving room. “It has the most amazing sky lights,” O’Bryan gushes. The bride wore a dress she made of fabric produced at the mill, of course, and, to top it off, a jacket she made with fabric from her mother’s wedding dress.

To learn more about the Oriole Mill and Western Carolina Sewing Company, check out wcsewco.com or www.theoriolemill.com.