Thoughts on Cloth and Life from an Honourary Doctorate

Charllotte Kwon, owner of Maiwa Handprints in Vancouver, Canada and founder of the Maiwa Foundation, recently received an honourary doctorate from the University of the Fraser Valley for her work with artisans in developing nations - particularly weavers in India.

Charllotte had some words of wisdom in her address to the audience. Here is one segment that really spoke to me:

When I thought about how to address an auditorium of graduates, I thought: each person is like a length of cloth. 

For many of the artisans I work with, cloth is believed to be a living thing. Something invested with potential. As a cloth ages, it records a narrative. Like a person, its best qualities become more pronounced with time, and like a person, it can be stained or tainted. Like a life it can unravel, or be torn apart. 

But it can also be mended, cleansed, renewed, embroidered, patched, and ultimately coveted.

Her full speech is presented in the Maiwa blog at http://maiwahandprints.blogspot.ca/ - go to June 18, 2014.

Congratulations, Charllotte!