ative urge—pulled her from her work as a
minister and led, eventually, to the loom.
Sacred TextAs a child in Louisville, Kentucky, Susan
grew up in a world infused with head
and heart—a world of academia, church,
and scripture. Her mother was an atten-
tive homemaker and accomplished seam-
stress, “an artisan of very practical
things,” Susan says, recalling the beautiful
clothes and decorative items her mother
lovingly made in her basement sewing
room. Her father, a learned minister, pro-
fessor, and the respected dean and
provost at the Southern Baptist Theo-
logical Seminary, captivated Susan with
his masterful weaving together of the
intellectual and spiritual. After college at
Baylor University in Waco, Texas, she set
off to find her own theological footing in
preparation for the ministry, enrolling at
the decidedly non-conservative Harvard
Divinity School, where the study of world
religions and rigorous feminist critiques
were transforming religious studies. After
earning her Master of Divinity degree in
1982, Susan became the first Baptist
woman ordained in the state of
Louisiana, where her family then lived.
Seeking a denomination that was more
welcoming to women, Susan also re-
ceived full clerical standing in the United
Church of Christ (UCC, the umbrella
denomination for Congregational churches)
and served a Congregational church in
Maine, as chaplain at a psychiatric hospi-
tal in San Francisco, and then at the
Circular Congregational Church in
Charleston. By all accounts, her gifts and
talents were well-suited to the pulpit. “I
think Susan may be the best preacher I’ve
ever listened to,” says her former col-
league and Circular Church senior pastor
Bert Keller. Nonetheless, after 18 years in
ministry, Susan felt drawn to follow an
unknown thread—to move on. She left
the church to explore new—and still
undetermined—creative directions.
“I loved being a minister, especially the
work of interpreting sacred texts, delving
into the ancient poetry and familiar Bibli-
cal passages to discover fresh meaning to
bring forth in sermons,” Susan explains.
“The problem was the sacred texts I
loved were written by men. That didn’t
make them less valuable or beautiful to
me, just woefully incomplete.” There
M A Y 2 0 0 6 | 123
loom1 , v: to appear indistinctly, come
into view.
loom2, n: a machine in which yarn or
thread is woven into fabric by the crossing
of vertical and horizontal threads (called
respectively the warp and the weft).
—New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
Profiles don’t usually begin with def-
initions, but this one is concerned
with the meaning of words. It’s a
story about weaving—specifically, about
the way the two meanings of “loom” have
found themselves interwoven in the life of
textile artist Susan Hull Walker. Twelve
years ago, a growing awareness of some-
thing—an indistinct but compelling cre-
122 | C H A R L E S T O N
B Y S T E P H A N I E H U N T • P H O T O G R A P H S B Y L A R R Y M O N T E I T H
A minister-turned-artist weaves together the spiritual and material
the charleston profile
••
▼
Woman of the ClothS U S A N H U L L W A L K E R
Tools of the Trade: Susan weaves intricately detailed
tapestries utilizing numerous threads of various colors and
textures strung from the wooden shuttle (above).
A Woman’s Touch: Vibrant colors and interwoven textures are both key elements in Susan’s work. Throughout
her home these elements are on display, both in her own work and in items she has collected from her travels
around the world. Pillows, tapestries, and exquisite throws make it a warm, inviting place.
•
CP-Susan DESIGN:CP-Susan DESIGN 4/18/07 4:16 PM Page 1
lish, stitch, and quilt—basically everything
one can do to a piece of fabric after it is
manufactured. Her trademark was a ravish-
ment of color in saturated, passionate
hues. Yet even after several successful
shows featuring her dyed and embellished
silks, including an international exhibit
with American Artists for Diversity in Mar-
rakech in 1999, Susan still felt she had not
found her artistic core.
“I was never satisfied with the results I
could get through my sources of raw
cloth. Finally my professor looked me in
the eye and said, ‘You have to make it
yourself,’ and I realized she was right.” The
M A Y 2 0 0 6 | 125
were Biblical stories about women, but
no words by and for women, she adds,
“and in the end, these I simply had to
have. I wanted to know what a sacred
text would look like, one that was com-
posed by the hearts of women, that
smelled of their experiences, that shone
with their minds.” And so she found her-
self drawn to a different kind of text, not
a weaving together of words and ideas
but of actual tactile threads, of textiles,
traditionally made by women.
Putting aside her clerical vestments,
Susan began taking classes at Savannah
College of Art and Design (SCAD), invest-
ing herself in the study of cloth, of the lit-
eral fabric of people’s lives. “I have always
loved cloth and been fascinated by its use
in celebrating rites of passage across all
cultural and religious traditions. At birth,
coming of age, marriage, and death, spe-
cial cloths wrap the body and carry one
across lifecycle thresholds. I love how
cloth holds and contains us. Its tactile,
connective language implicitly commu-
nicates values that are important to
women,” says Susan, who surrounds her-
self and her home with vibrant color and
intriguing textures—sarongs, pillows, tap-
estries and artfully draped throws create
an inviting, sensual delight.
During her first five years studying the
fabric arts, she focused on surface design,
learning to dye, silkscreen, batik, embel-
124 | C H A R L E S T O N
Body of Work: Before she began to weave her own fabric, Susan focused on surface design, experimenting
with dye, silkscreen, stitching, and other forms of altering manufactured fabric (above). Susan’s trademark has
become passionate, feminine hues which she creates through a complex dying process (above right).
•
“I have always loved
cloth and been
fascinated by its use
in celebrating rites
of passage across all
cultural and
religious traditions.”
—Susan Hull Walker
Weaving is a physical, muscular craft,
but Susan brings to it both an artist’s
sensibility and a minister’s soul,
steeped in symbol and metaphor.
Color Culture: Susan found the elaborate dyed silk
ikat robe that hangs on the wall of her office while
traveling in Turkey.
•
CP-Susan DESIGN:CP-Susan DESIGN 4/18/07 4:16 PM Page 3
126 | C H A R L E S T O N
next month Susan took a course in
weaving. “I immediately realized, this is it,
this is what drew me to cloth in the first
place,” she says.
The Crossing PointWeaving is a physical, muscular craft, but
Susan brings to it both an artist’s sensibil-
ity and a minister’s soul, steeped in sym-
bol and metaphor. “Weaving is the bringing
together of oppositional forces, the taut
warp threads (fixed vertically on the loom)
and the more interpretive weft threads
(brought by a wooden shuttle horizontally
across the warp),” she explains. “When the
loom is warped, it’s a rigid, imposing struc-
ture. I liken it to my inherited religious tra-
dition—very orderly and masculine.
“Then I bring to it the shuttle of weft
thread, which is spontaneously chosen
and fluidly added, which corresponds to
my felt experience as a woman. Where
the two intersect, there’s an encounter, a
meeting, a crossroads. The tension
between the warp and weft is everything
in weaving. Symbolically, that’s where I
Prayer for Peace: In February of 2005, Susan
opened the Little Gallery at Mepkin Abbey with the
21-piece textile exhibition entitled, “Why Not Be
Turned into Fire? Hand-Woven Studies of the Body at
Prayer.” The exhibit, exploring the cycles of the
interior, contemplative life, inspired by the Tallit, the
Jewish Prayer shawl, reflected the importance of
spirituality in Susan’s life and work.
•
CP-Susan DESIGN:CP-Susan DESIGN 4/18/07 4:16 PM Page 5
want to live, at that intersection, at the
heart of the matter.”
In her upstairs studio, baskets bulge
with rectangular swaths of multi-textured
fabrics—silky soft fibers, an occasional
feather or golden tuft interwoven, loose
threads and unfinished ends from various
pattern trials—giving testimony to the infi-
nite possibilities of marrying warp and
weft. “I was just playing with all this, seeing
what works, what I like and don’t like,”
Susan explains. Many of these turned out
to be rough drafts for an extended textile
essay, a 21-piece installation which became
the inaugural exhibit at the Little Gallery at
Mepkin Abbey last February.
Entitled, “Why Not Be Turned into Fire?
Hand-Woven Studies of the Body at
Prayer,” the exhibit was a three-part series
exploring the cycles of the interior, con-
templative life inspired by the Tallit, the
Jewish Prayer shawl. The spiritual subject
matter brought forth with artistry and
accomplished execution was an inter-
weaving itself, a commingling of minister,
material, and muse.
“I’ve watched Susan go deeper and
deeper into the cloth,” says fellow artist
and former studiomate, McLean Stith.
“She’s gone from exploring its external
qualities, dyeing voluptuous colors on silk
and doing exquisite embroidery, to the
M A Y 2 0 0 6 | 129128 | C H A R L E S T O N
Function & Art: The color and design on this hand-
woven Guatemalan huipil identifies the village in which
it was made.
Foreign Exchange: Susan has traveled extensively, studying the textile-rich cultures of Central America and the Near East. In the mountain village of Santiago Atitlán,
Guatemala, she learned the age-old process of weaving on a backstrap loom (pictured) which involves stretching a loom tied to a tree; the weaver keeps the loom taut by
affixing it around her back while performing the weaving in her lap.
•T HE
A UDUBO N
G ALLERY
The finest original naturalhistory and sporting art from
the 17th to 20th centuries. Fea-turing works by Audubon,
Besler, Redout�, Gould, RolandClark,
190 KING STREETCHARLESTON , SC 29401
843-853-1100
BURTON E. MOORE III, Director
A Joel Oppenheimer CompanyCharleston ¥ Chicago
Call or write for our free catalogwww.audubonart.com
Plate 18.30,Great Egret,John James AudubonThe New-York Historical Society EditionAudubon?s Fifty Best Watercolors
Q
•
CP-Susan DESIGN:CP-Susan DESIGN 4/18/07 4:16 PM Page 7
lage of Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, to
learn the ancient technique of weaving
on a backstrap loom (women wear the
loom wrapped around their back and tied
to a tree, weaving in their laps) she was
struck by the fertility symbolism. “Creat-
ing the cloth was like giving birth. I felt
this incredible connection with centuries
of women—for thousands of years weav-
ing has been a woman’s language, a way
to express what’s most meaningful and
important to them.”
Immersing herself in the non-verbal,
maternal world of thread and fiber doesn’t
seem all that different from her ministerial
work, Susan claims. “I feel I’m weaving my
words, or sermons, now in cloth. I’m
pulling threads from a vast and ancient
web of women’s experience. And as I do, I
feel like I’m becoming, ever more authen-
tically, a woman of the cloth.”
130 | C H A R L E S T O N M A Y 2 0 0 6 | 131
actual crux of weft and warp—unraveling
the symbolism of fabric itself. Her earlier
work was prismatic, now it’s much more
elemental and unadorned as she moves
toward the heart of weaving.”
Susan’s search for a distinctly feminine
expression of spirituality has indeed led
her toward the heart of weaving. Both on
her own loom and through travel and
intense study of women weavers in tex-
tile-rich cultures such as Turkey,
Guatemala, and Mexico, she has followed
a thread—a woman’s and artist’s intu-
ition, if you will— and the discoveries
have been surprising. “In western Mexico,
the Wixárika Indians have no word for
‘weaver’ because all women weave,”
Susan remarks. “Their cosmology, their
spiritual understanding and creation sto-
ries are all rooted in weaving metaphors.”
When Susan traveled to the mountain vil-
A Spiritual Display: Susan putting the finishing
touches on her Mepkin Abbey exhibition (top). With her
husband, Trenholm, at the Mepkin opening (bottom.)
Contributing editor and freelance writer
Stephanie Hunt lives in Mount Pleasant.
••
“I’ve watched Susan
go deeper and
deeper into the cloth.
She’s gone from
exploring its
external qualities to
the actual crux of
weft and warp—
unraveling the
symbolism of the
fabric itself.”
—McLean Stith
SpencerArt Galleries I & II
Affordable Fine Contemporary Art
Lisa Willits Catherine Spencer Sarah Kuhnell
Colleen Wiesmann
Catherine SpencerTeresa Jones
Jerry Spencer D. Susan Gralski
K.D. McMurray
Deborah Palmer
Jan Sasser
Over 35 ArtistsMasters, Mid-career & Emerging
Wide Range of Media, Styles & Subjects
Charleston in the Old French Quarter55 Broad Street 57 Broad Street
843-722-6854 843-723-4482Monday-Saturday 10-5
Online at spencerartgallery.com
Create the look of Old World Europe.
843.971.9447www.charlestoncobble.com
•Driveways•Garden Paths•Patios•Pool Decks
CP-Susan DESIGN:CP-Susan DESIGN 4/18/07 4:16 PM Page 9
Top Related