Damascus Fiber Arts School is located in a very special building with a long history as a place of learning.
Like several communities in the foothills of Mt. Hood, the modern day city of Damascus started with the arrivals of emigrants along the Oregon Trail beginning in the 1850s. There is very little that remains from that time except for our building! Built in 1876, the Damascus School was a one-room public elementary school beginning in 1877. In 1911 a second classroom was added. It continued as an elementary school until 1956 when it was purchased by the Damascus Community Church and became a church school.
In 1967, it was purchased by Amy Miller, who named it the Damascus Pioneer Craft School. In the beginning, owner Amy taught crafts such as tole painting, rug hooking, and tin punching. Amy’s business partner, Dodie Gannet, filled the west room with floor looms. She was a gifted teacher with a large, devoted following.
Spinning was added, taught by the Miller’s daughter-in-law, Barbara Miller, on spinning wheels set near the windows of the east room. Natural dyeing was not far behind being taught by Barbara. Her old centrifuge is still at the school.
In the early 1970s Audrey Moore invited Noël Bennett, the author of Designing with Wool: Advanced Techniques in Navajo Weaving (1979) and co-author Tiana Bighorse for Working with the Wool: How to Weave a Navajo Rug (1970) and Navajo Weaving Way: the Path from Fleece to Rug (1997) to meet her and a group of weavers in the woods near the McKenzie Pass. There, under the branches of red cedars and douglas fir, they learned to build looms, make warp, and weave in the Navajo style.
Audrey never returned to floor-loom weaving. She set up Navajo-style looms in the east room, and that became the room where she wove and taught Navajo-style weaving from 1973 to 2020. Noël Bennett remained her friend for life and Pearl Sunrise, another friend and Navajo weaver, occasionally came to Portland and taught workshops at the school. Pearl’s husband built a very small Navajo loom now displayed in DFAS’s foyer (the former cloakroom of the public school).
In 1980 the building, one of the oldest rural schoolhouses in Oregon still standing, was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
The Pioneer Craft School continued from 1967 until 2005 when Barbara Miller and Dodie Gannette retired, marking the end of the Damascus Pioneer Craft School. Audrey, 80 years old at that time, wanted to continue teaching. She took over the school, renamed it the Damascus Fiber Arts School and operated it as a small business. She rented the building from Barbara Miller and her husband Phil, who charged very little rent in order to support the school.
Retired from her own career, weaver Terry Olson began helping Audrey with the school. They taught on Tuesdays and Thursdays on the Navajo-style looms in the east room. The west room was mostly empty. Soon after, Terry changed her focus to tapestry and began teaching students in the west room on small copper looms. Within two years, both rooms were full of weavers. By 2018 the school had to place people on waiting lists.
In 2020, Audrey Moore retired. With the support of Audrey, a group of DFAS teachers and weavers dedicated to keeping the school going formed a Board of Directors who decided that a 501(c)(3) nonprofit platform would best meet the needs of the community and honor the traditions Audrey had begun.
In the same year came two setbacks. One, a source of sorrow, was the death of Audrey Moore. Then, because of the pandemic, the school had to be shut down, cutting off traditional revenue streams. The board responded quickly to the loss of revenue by organizing two webinar lecture series (in 2020 and again in 2021). The series featured professional tapestry artists from around the United States, as well as local weavers.
The lectures were free; DFAS simply asked for donations. Support poured in from around the country and abroad. This support was crucial to the school’s survival. It also let us know that we should continue with our efforts to remain open.
2021-2022 saw a gradual return to in-person activities and the resumption of classes and workshops. Since then our school has flourished. Our summer program offers a wide range of fiber related learning opportunities from spinning, dyeing, and basketry to tapestry techniques from different weaving traditions as well as innovative contemporary practices. Inspired by our successful webinar lecture series 2020-2021, we initiated a monthly Online TapestryTalks program in 2024 which continues to be very popular with speakers and audiences from around the world. Thanks to its founders and the leaders who succeeded them, DFAS continues to support fiber arts in the Pacific Northwest and further afield.
For more information about the history of the building as well as old photos of the school in its different incarnations, please look at these websites.
National Registry of Historic Places