Caleb Sayan is the co-founder of Textile Hive and the son of Andrea Aranow. Sayan conceived, assembled, and led the team responsible for the digitization of the Andrea Aranow Textile Design and the creation of a visual database that houses the collection online. Sayan's deep appreciation for the history, intricacies, and tactile nature of textiles, combined with his passion for technology and its application in enhancing interactions with cultural material, led him to create Textile Hive. Currently, Sayan consults through Visual Archiving Solutions on large-scale digitization projects. Visual Archiving enhances and augments large physical collections, transforming them from static to dynamic assets, and serves institutional, private, and corporate collections.
Growing up in Peru, London, Japan, China, and the United States, Sayan was surrounded by textiles and foreign cultures. He graduated from Trinity College in 2000 with a degree in International and Comparative Politics. Since 2003, he has worked with the Andrea Aranow Textile Collection, initially as a New York City business providing inspiration for textile designers.
In 2009, Sayan relocated the collection to Portland, Oregon, and embarked on the project to digitize the contents of the Andrea Aranow Textile Design Collection, aiming to make it accessible to a wider and more diverse audience. Since his mother's passing in July 2021, Caleb has established the Andrea Aranow Textile Center to house, organize, and digitize all of his mother's textile collections, research notes, field slides, books, and associated materials. Caleb's goal is to launch a series of four exhibits starting in 2023 under the banner of Textiles From Heaven, which aims to honor his mother and the craftspeople who created the textiles she collected.
Suni Sonqo Vizcarra Wood (Quechua Nation, Peru) is an artist born in Taos, NM (1996) and raised in the Sacred Valley of the Incas, Peru. He studied sculpture at the Art University Bellas Artes Diego Quispe Tito in Cusco, Peru and received his BFA with honors in sculpture at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, NM December 2021. He has participated in several art shows in Peru and USA. His sculpture is mixed media and is currently focused on bronze casting. Suni’s inspiration comes from his Quechua ancestry and the wisdom of Andean worldview important in his life. Suni is a member of the Kusi Kawsay Community, and a musician of the Ñawpa Ñan traditional music group. His work explores new ways of seeing and understanding. He transmits messages that awaken a balance between living immersed in this world of modernity without separating from ancestral roots in order to emerge with dignity, and to build a collective destiny.
Caroll Dunham, co-creator of Around the World in 80 Fabrics is a medical anthropologist, Buddhist chaplain, and social entrepreneur. Carroll has called Nepal home for thirty years and is the founder of Wild Earth, a company that promotes Himalayan plant wisdom and provides work for women. National Geographic Expeditions leader and author of four books, she has worked on over 12 film projects for National Geographic, BBC, PBS, Channel 4. Fascinated by the natural history of textiles, with an anthropological storytelling lens, Carroll is interested in the relationship of nature, culture, and people in the creation of fibers as we look to what we might wear as a species post-petroleum.