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Located in Knoxville's Market Square is a wonderful gallery called Nomad. Inside is a colorful collection of handwoven articles, beads, paintings, and ethnic artifacts, as well as supplies for weaving, knitting, and lace making. As colorful as the contents of the shop, is its owner, Emily Dewhirst, weaver, writer, teacher.
Ms. Dewhirst was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but has lived around the world. Her international odyssey started when she was seventeen. World War II had ended, and Europe was again open to Americans. Dewhirst's grandparents provided her with the opportunity to bicycle across Europe. Her passion for travel as well as her appetite for other cultures was born. She later returned to Europe to study at the University of Paris. As the years moved along, so did Ms. Dewhirst, living in Italy, Denmark, Egypt, and Korea among other places. Always adventurous, Dewhirst, after raising her family, joined the Peace Corps and found herself in Kazakhstan in the mid-90s. She says that the people of that region remain among her favorite in the world, and she plans a return visit soon.
Ms. Dewhirst started weaving as a child. Fabric, its relevance to history and culture, has always interested her, and she views textile art as a lesson in the way people of different places live and why. She states that she began to see countries as colors related to their fabrics. While Dewhirst is a weaver, she is also a poet and has captured this visualization in some of her writing. I see a whole canopy of color formed by dripping, freshly dyed yarn framed against the dark passageways of a medieval souk, the soft green of cactus enclosures stopping the movement of the sand, the dark brown of small bundles of bark for cleaning teeth. (from Colors of Morocco by Emily Dewhirst)
In one corner of Nomad a loom
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