FOSEL pays tribute to accomplished fiber artist, weaver, ceramicist, and educator, Theresa-India Young

Theresa-India Young was an internationally known and widely respected weaver, ceramicist, interdisciplinary arts teacher, and education consultant who worked in the Boston area from 1975 until 2008, when she passed away from cancer. Among other places, she taught studio art and museum education at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where a fiber artist scholarship is endowed in her name. 

A long-time resident of the Tremont Street Piano Factory, India Young was a strong advocate of the idea that wall hangings were art, not crafts.  As such, she trained students at the Museum of Fine Arts, the Peabody Museum, the Harvard University Museums, Lesley University, Wheelock College, the Cambridge Friends School, the Boston Center for the Arts, Roxbury Community College, and the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts. 

Born in New York City, India Young was drawn to textiles from the age of three, when she would sort ribbons her uncle brought home from the candy factory where he worked in the Bronx. She would watch her grandmother iron the bundles she had sorted by color and weave them into throws for family members. This closeness of family and community was pivotal in her outlook on life, a belief system carried with her throughout her career. “I am an artist, woman of color, and from African diaspora,” she said.

She became known for her deeply researched teachings of techniques like backstrap, ikat, kente, European tapestry, and Navaho weaving, skills for which she traveled all over the world. 

In the 1970s, at Boston’s Massachusetts Horticultural Society, with its 33,000 volumes about plant life from all over the globe, she studied natural dyes and struck up a friendship with the horticulturists. “I think they wondered, ‘who is this Black girl who comes in here to read the books?’” she told the Bay State Banner, which reviewed her exhibit of wall hangings at the Horticultural Society in the 1980s. “I kept on coming back. They saw me doing sketches. I began to get into conversations with the librarians. I found a home.” Another famous South End artist, Allen Rohan Crite, designed the invitations for her 1978 show. 

At the South End Library, India Young conducted three community weaving projects, including the DNC 2004 Boston Veterans Flag; Backstrap Weaving; and Weaving Community, which was her favorite library project. During the Library’s 2019 renovation, the tapestry was damaged, but plans are underway to recreate it. 

India Young was a strong supporter of community-based arts and, in 1989, co-founded the Kush Club, a teen docent program established as a collaboration between the Nubian Gallery and Egyptian Department at the MFA and the Museum of the National Center for Afro-American Artists in Roxbury.

India Young’s work has been exhibited in many locations, including Massachusetts College of Arts, the City of Boston Mayor’s Gallery, the National Center of Afro-American Arts, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Nashua Art Center, the Slater Memorial Museum, and the Warwick Museum.  Her work has appeared in catalogues for juried exhibits like Atlanta Life Insurance Co., Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center Traveling Exhibit. 

A new exhibit, Legacy: A Continuous Thread,  Theresa-India Young & Contemporary Fiber Artists, will be at the Piano Craft Guild Gallery at 791 Tremont Street from October 1st- 25th. All proceeds will benefit the Theresa India-Young Scholarship Fund.  For further information, contact:  

Jacqueline L. McRath:  brown.18@netzero.net