Meet our Faculty

Alison Heryer is an interdisciplinary artist whose work combines costume, installation, performance, and community engagement. As a costume designer, she is a member of United Scenic Artists, Local 829. Her design credits include productions at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, 59E59 Theaters, La MaMa, The New Victory Theater, Portland Center Stage, Portland Opera, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Artists Repertory Theatre, ZACH Theatre, The Hypocrites, and Redmoon. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, World Stage Design, and The Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space.

Shelley Socolofsky is an interdisciplinary artist based in textiles and installation. Her work develops within a gossamer connecting metaphysics, ritual, science, and technology to explore a layered perception of the embodied experience. Socolofsky’s work can be found in numerous public collections; locally and abroad. Recent residencies, fellowships, exhibitions, and publications include the Astra Zarina Fellowship, the Jacquard Center, The Material Turn, Motherboard and her Satellites and Artist magazine. Shelley is the president of American Tapestry Alliance; an international non-profit organization representing members from 27 countries.

Alicia is a freelance designer and educator with over 15 years of experience working in textile-based product creation for major U.S. brands such as Target, Macy's, Mountain Hardwear, and Nike. Beyond industry, her research-based studio practice involves storytelling through textiles that aims to understand and implement the power of textiles to engage with community, and to inform culture. Alicia holds an MFA from the University of California Davis, is on the Board of Directors of the Surface Design Association, and is Embellishment Volume Editor for Bloomsbury’s Encyclopedia of World Textiles to be released in Spring 2023.

Tricia has over eighteen years of experience designing for prestigious fashion companies worldwide. She is co-founder and owner of a successful international print design studio, while being an adjunct instructor at PSU. Tricia also, works as a project leader for the NGO Hecho Por Nosotros, a sustainable fashion organization that has consultative status at the United Nations. She volunteers for the Ghana Fashion Board in West Africa and is a facilitator/mentor for the Links/Portland Art Museum's Arts Scholarship for female students of color. She is a co-producer of the Portland-based Ethical Fashion Festival and runs workshops on Design Thinking and sustainable fashion at Universities worldwide.

Jea Alford is an interdisciplinary artist playing with themes of class, labor, the role of aesthetics in economy, and the role of economy in the artist’s studio. She creates ephemeral and poetic performative work, objects, and media, co-runs a sustainably-minded clothing cooperative, and has stewarded projects, such as an artist residency run out of her home, that are based in generosity. Jea is a Fulbright recipient, winner of the Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts Prize, and recipient of grants from OAC and RACC to support participation in residencies and exhibitions domestically and internationally.

Annin Barrett’s research addresses global fashion/dress history, textiles/their cultural meanings, sustainable textile practices and technology. Areas of focus include textiles as visual culture, textile semiotics, design history, art history, and the de-centering of traditionally colonial studies. Her graduate studies at University of Arizona led to a MFA in Fibers, and she has received RACC and OAC grants to support her work. She is the U.S. Exhibition Reviews Editor for the scholarly journal, Textile: Cloth and Culture, and a frequent presenter at Textile Society of America symposia. 

Ophir El-Boher is a designer, artist, scholar, and educator focused on the environmental-social impacts of fashion. She creates innovative models for sustainable studio practice, extending the concept of upcycling. Inspired by natural and cultural systems, Ophir uses clothing as her medium to address contemporary issues. Through writing, public speaking, and teaching, Ophir promotes paradigm shifts for fashion's role by providing creative alternatives to satisfy materialistic needs and desires; skill-learning, fashion-hacking, and DIY as active resistance to consumerism.