Photo by Diana Light on UnsplashJoin us for a contemplative workshop hosted by Folk Lounge to create a social textile with cross stitch embroidery exploring the natural rhythms of release and renewal. A practice of memory editing as we navigate seasonal transitions, expressed as a collaborative topography that captures our personal and cultural feelings about navigating change. Layer memory, intention, & vision on a flowing tapestry of stories. Rivers are natural editors, carrying some things downstream while depositing others on banks, carving new channels while filling old ones.
Guests
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Aaron Tupac (they/them) is a fungal educator, community organizer, and author of Meeting the Mushrooms of Los Angeles: Curiosity, Queerness, and How to Love a Fungus. They are the founder of Exploring the Mycoverse, a Los Angeles–based fungi-inspired community focused on building better relationships with the more-than-human world, and founder and chair of the North American Mycological Association’s Conservation & Stewardship Committee. Aaron also works as a fungi collector for the California Fungal Diversity Survey, the first government-funded statewide project of its kind to map California’s funga. Through their teaching, fieldwork, and community organizing, Aaron works to make fungi more visible, understood, and valued.
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Ani Hakobyan is a professional barista and the creator of Ververi Coffee Collective, a Los Angeles-based mobile coffee experience rooted in Armenian heritage, specialty coffee, and the joy of gathering. Named after the traditional Armenian circle dance known for its joyful movement and upward spirit, Ververi is about connection — between people, places, generations, and memories. She believes coffee has always been more than a drink — it's something shared around a table, a conversation that lasts a little longer, a ritual that brings people closer.
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Mattia, who performs as Magmatic, is a poet and musician based in Frogtown, Los Angeles. Since moving to LA in 2020, his poetry has been featured in Crocetti's Poetry magazine and recognized as a finalist for the prestigious Mario Luzi, Camaiore Proposta, and Lord Byron awards.
Magmatic creates video poetry that blurs the lines between poetry and electronic music, performing live along the Los Angeles River with layered piano, guitar, synth, and electronic drums. His immersive sonic experiences blend electronic and rap sounds to capture the spirit of the waterways and urban landscape he calls home.
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Olivia Sia
A is a fourth-generation textile artist based in California and founder of the Mixed Stitch. Rooted in her Northwestern Iranian and English-American heritage, she creates original designs that weave together tradition and innovation. Her work honors ancestral craft while reimagining it through a contemporary lens.
Nora Abushaaban
Nora has been practicing tatreez since she was a child, having learned it from her Palestinian grandmother. She is inspired by ancestral geometric patterns and views tatreez as a living visual archive of place, belonging, and womanhood.
Irena Li
Irena makes mostly ceramics with occasional experiments in fiber and metal. Her work explores functionality, material and technical processes, and the resource-scrap-repurpose cycle. She thinks a lot about space. -
Shagho is a multidisciplinary design leader, artist, and speaker working at the frontier of creativity and culture. As a founder of Folk Lounge, she facilitates classes, workshops & programs for communities inspired by ornamental lineages in LA and beyond. Known for Embroidery Socials, she is passionate about sparking new lineages of expression, curiosity for open archives and cultural preservation, connecting with land and encourage being in contemporary urban settings. Born in Vladivostok, of Armenian and Russian heritage, she holds a BS in Fashion Design and an MFA in Human-Computer Interaction from California College of the Arts. She believes in the power of collective to weave new connections between past wisdom and future possibility.
HOST
Folk Lounge is a contemporary craft collective founded by multidisciplinary artist and design leader Shagho that bridges ancestral ornamental traditions with urgent contemporary needs. Through contemplative craft circles held in public parks and collaborative programs with cultural institutions, Folk Lounge creates living spaces where traditional practices become responses to the crises of our time: nature deficit, digital overwhelm, cultural homogenization, and the erosion of intergenerational knowledge transmission.
ORGANIZER
LA Design Weekend is a weekend-long celebration of LA's sprawling, spectacular design scene—broken down into bite-sized, neighborhood-based experiences. LAD/W is a hands-on, community-driven experience that welcomes everyone to step behind the scenes and into the spaces where creativity really happens. This year, honoring the resilience of the creative community while spotlighting the makers, spaces, and ideas that continue to rebuild, reimagine, and inspire.
VENUE
Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy is a California state agency working for 40+ years to protect and reconnect Southern California's wild and urban landscapes. Through partnerships with communities and agencies, it has helped preserve more than 80,000 acres of parkland, weaving mountains, rivers, trails, and wildlife habitat into a network of parks open to all, including along the Los Angeles River.
TERMS
By registering or attending any Folk Lounge event, you confirm awareness of associated risks and release the Organizer, Assistant Organizers, and Event Hosts from all related liability. You affirm agreement to our Weaving Belonging, Mindful Making and Participation Agreement — and if acting as a legal guardian, that you're authorized to agree on another's behalf: folklounge.com/terms
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