our resident artists
Alyssa Sacora
Melanie Wilder
alinahh ever
Alyssa Sacora
Alyssa Sacora (she/her) is a crafts person working in plant-based mediums in the form of papermaking, book arts, basketry, and weaving. She finds inspiration by observing relationships in the wider world. To reduce her human footprint and encourage creative thinking, she primarily works with locally available and repurposed natural materials. Leaves, vines and bark from iris, daylily, kudzu, okra, tulip poplar and willow are often combined with salvaged textiles to create her palette. Her artistic pursuits are directly related to her lifestyle choices with reciprocity and mindfulness as a guiding force.
In addition to and in support of her craft, she tends a 3-acre homestead in Western North Carolina with her husband, Adam. They grow fruits and vegetables, medicinal herbs, and art plants. They use solar electric and solar thermal systems for electricity and heating, collect rain water, and tend a flock of chickens.
Alyssa has taught for a variety of organizations in WNC and often utilizes an outside setting to help her students make the connection that we are nature and that our lives are intertwined with the plants, the soil, and the air around us.
Alyssa is a Co-Founder of Catalyst Fiber Workshop.
Melanie Wilder
Melanie (she/her) is a weaver, spinner, natural dyer and educator. Her artistic practice explores how process crosses into our daily lives and how intentional choices can help shape our footprint on the future. This involves the yearly rhythm of growing fibers and dyes and how textiles made from these plants create ritual and meaning.
She is passionate about building opportunities for craft folk to learn about local fibers and material choices. The past 16 years she has been running the fibers program at Warren Wilson College, a program she started in 2009. She lives in Swannanoa with her husband and has 2 children ages 15 and 20.
Melanie is a Co-Founder of Catalyst Fiber Workshop. She has been dreaming up this community weaving space for a while and is beyond thrilled that it is finally coming to fruition.
Alinahh ever
alinahh ever (ki/ker or they/them) weaves together beauty, utility and sacredness in cloth and life. After spending time in Guatemaya, alinahh was deeply inspired by the Tzutujil Mayan women who weave gorgeous colorful cloth on backstrap looms. Spending time learning this practice as well as natural dyeing from plants from these women has since informed their fiber practice. alinahh is in love with natural fibers and natural colors from our beloved Earth. They have a devotion to creating handwoven pieces that are in tune with the Earth, are sustainable, beautiful and functional.
alinahh has been a social justice activist and advocate since they were a teenager. They are queer, nonbinary, a child of nazi holocaust survivors and immigrants. They are active in many local organizations and communities such as Earth Path Education, Medicine Wheel Way, Earthaven Ecovillage, and others that support and sustain nature connection and social justice. Their skills have brought them into leadership roles facilitating rites of passage ceremonies, grief tending, experiential learning for young women and BIPOC youth, Social Justice education, Earth-based ritual, and wild plant food identification and foraging. Communal singing, play, ritual, performance, and art are at the core of their offerings.
alinahh is passionate about collaborative art and excited to bring their fiber art into creating projects with others that support sustainable Earth-loving approaches and raise awareness about social injustice towards a world where we treat ourselves and others with kindness and respect. alinahh has a Masters in Education from San Francisco State, a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Wesleyan University (Connecticut), and is currently near the end of the Fiber Arts program at Haywood Community College.
alinahh's business name is Weave Love and you can find them on Etsy, Instagram, Facebook, and a soon to be website.
Are you interested in becoming a Resident Artist at Catalyst Fiber Workshop? Fill out our application form and we will be in touch about current opportunities.