Bend artist Dee Ford Potter has poured her life story into woven arts. A 58-year retrospective collection of her work called “A Life Well Woven is on display at Central Oregon Community College’s Rotunda Gallery in the Barber Library through Dec. 7.
The art dates back to Potter’s early days. In 1967, she was studying architecture with a minor in interior design when she was required to take a weaving class. That experience changed the trajectory of her life. Since then, she estimates she’s made around 700 weavings. She has an intimate relationship with every piece she’s made.
“First of all, I’m expressing myself, but it’s like I’m birthing this piece. I don’t do a whole lot of functional pieces… I put my feelings and my emotions into my work,” she explains. Each of the 70 pieces on exhibit has a story which is written on white cards so viewers can go on the journey with her.
Among the work is a series of wall hangings representing different countries, each one the same sized square “face” with a fringe. Visitors can view the Faces of Norway, Russia and Hong Kong. Another wall hanging is made from recycled pieces of plastic that Potter would have thrown in the trash such as carpet tape, the opening strips off cat food bags, twine and spice bags, which took her a decade to save. Other artwork conveys the deep blue turbulence of the Colorado River, the dry walls of the Grand Canyon, rock formations in the Steens Mountains, the nature within National Parks and the flow over Bridal Veil Falls.
One of her larger pieces represents a tumultuous time in her life involving an illness and divorce. It begins as an organized, tightly woven piece when her life was calm and ends with a chaotic, ragged weave.
“But the nice thing is,” Potter says, “you know, this is the piece that I literally wove through the trauma and it began to heal me.”
During the interview, a group touring the COCC campus stopped by the library.
“I really did like this one. I don’t know what draws you to it,” says Lulu Segal who was on the tour. She was looking at “Going Up Please” which Potter says represents the copper button panels inside a New York elevator. “I’ve never been to New York,” Segal says, “but I feel that atmosphere a lot.”
Chelsea Jahn, also part of the group, was admiring a large wall hanging entitled “Nature’s Light.” “The light throughout the niches, they capture this place. It’s about the light throughout the day and how it changes through the seasons as well. I feel like the urban flow is such a cool depiction as well. You can totally see the seasons.”
Potter started the Central Oregon Weavers Guild in 1973 which is now called Central Oregon Spinners & Weavers Guild. She started the Weaving Guilds of Oregon, a statewide fiber arts group, in 1982. The COCC exhibit includes a notebook on a table near the library’s entrance which holds newspaper clippings and advertisements from her achievements, including two shows in Paris in the 1980s featuring her work. In 1986, she represented the U.S. in a cultural exchange with China. She’s also spent many years teaching weaving to what she estimates to be around 10,000 kids, mostly in rural parts of Oregon. She kept tiny scrap pieces of yarn from those years and wove them into a giant, colorful wall hanging, currently on the second floor of the Barber Library.
Her pieces represent every aspect of her life. “This is an old bucket to me,” Potter says, pointing to a brown and blue wall hanging with a wire handle and fringe bottom. “Growing up with summers at my grandmother’s house, we fed the ducks, the geese, the rabbits, the chickens, the pigs and, you know, they didn’t have brand new buckets. It was an old, rusty, leaky bucket,” she explains.
“I was gifted these strips of clothing from the 40s and 50s and these colors kind of remind me of a pioneer home and they did what they called rag rugs. That’s an example,” Potter says, pointing to “Big Blue, Wool Rag Pile.”
Potter has supported herself for decades by selling her woven works of art. So far, two of her pieces at COCC have sold and she received a request for a commissioned item.
The Art in the Library program at the college is so popular, artists are booked through 2028. A different artist is featured each quarter. “We try to vary the types of art that we show from photography to 3D to paintings to fabric,” explains Library Director Tina M. Hovekamp.
Potter considers the fibers hanging on the walls of the Barber Library her memoir.
“It’s an honor. I’m amazed to look at it like this,” she says, gazing with moist eyes at the two floors filled with her art. “I’ve done this. These are my pieces.”
Once this exhibit closes, she’s been invited to do a show at a gallery in Sunriver.
Dee Ford Potter: A Life Well Woven
Through Dec. 7, Mon-Thu 8am-6pm, Fri 8am-5pm
COCC Rotunda Gallery Inside Barber Library
2600 NW College Way, Bend
cocc.edu/departments/library/spaces/art/
Free
This article appears in the Source November 20, 2025.
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