DesignTO Talks: Within the Weave

Join DesignTO for ‘Within the Weave’, a conversation tracing the meeting points of material and memory. This panel brings together artists who explore how fragments of personal and environmental histories can be gathered and transformed into new, interconnected wholes.

Through dialogue, they’ll reflect on how material practice becomes a form of storytelling—revealing how the landscapes we inhabit might be translated by incorporating elements of repetition and irregularity, the familiar and the abstract.

SPEAKERS

Jennifer Coghill is a Toronto mixed-media fibre and textile artist who finds beauty in the everyday and the overlooked. She works with discarded materials, utilizing textile techniques that reflect her interest in the domestic sphere. Coghill reworks the waste from our daily coffee and tea rituals—used coffee filters, tea bags, discarded packaging, and burlap coffee sacks—into art inspired by quilting and home decor to explore ideas of comfort and home.

Helen Kong and Amanda Rataj are craft artists who both graduated from OCAD University. Kong is a Scarborough-based tea practitioner and ceramic artist whose works merges Japanese and Chinese tea philosophies with contemporary aesthetics, often exploring themes of culture, history, and sensory experience. Rataj is a Hamilton-based hand weaver who explores materiality and pattern through textiles. Her work has explored personal history, place, and materials like wool and flax.

Kathleen Morris is a textile artist and former educator based in Toronto. Her textiles practice is rooted in the landscape of the urban environment on the north shores of Lake Ontario. Kathleen explores connection to place, both literally and metaphorically, through woven work. In some, embedded leaves, fronds, blossoms, or branches of plant species pay direct homage to their source. Others are interpretive works, designed to translate natural phenomena into the language of thread.

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‘Within the Weave’ is organized by DesignTO, and supported by the Trinity Bellwoods BIA. The DesignTO Festival is supported by the Government of Ontario and the City of Toronto.

DesignTO is a charitable arts organization celebrating 16 years of designing a sustainable, just, and joyful future. From January 23-February 1, 2026, the DesignTO Festival features 100+ free events and exhibitions across Toronto, showcasing hundreds of artists and designers. As Canada’s largest annual design festival, DesignTO has welcomed over 1 million attendees, reached 2.6 billion people through media, supported 7,000+ artists and designers, and generated $159 million in tourism impact since 2011.

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