I spent the day touring the Textile Museum and Phillips Collection in D. C. There’s plenty of inspiration at both. The Jasper Johns exhibit at the Phillips Collection showed his work as printmaker. The marks he makes and his mantra “Take and item, do something to it and then do something else” (a rough interpretation) create layers of design. I think I could spend hours looking at some of his later works.

The Textile Museum invited a group of well-known textile artists to take a piece (or two or three) from the museum’s collection as inspiration for new work. The results are fun, intriguing, playful and meditative. The new works are displayed next to the historic pieces, contextualizing contemporary design within the tradition of textile art.

Both exhibits are well worth a trip to D.C., even in hot, muggy July.