LaChaun Moore is a DMV native, ethnographic fiber farmer, interdisciplinary artist, and designer. She founded nnia farm (pronounced “knee-ah”) on Johns Island, Charleston, SC, growing heirloom varieties like Indigofera suffruticosa, naturally colored green and brown Sea Island cotton, and gourds—work informed by her grandfather, a sharecropper who fled Georgia with his brothers.

LaChaun earned a BFA in Integrated Design from Parsons, The New School for Design, specializing in Alternative Fashion Strategies and Social Practice. Her grant-funded research at Parsons—“Perceptions of Cotton and Agriculture within the African American Community”— continues to shape her work. After graduating, she earned a certificate in holistic farming and business planning while deepening her agricultural and fiber practices.

In 2018, she launched the WEAVE Podcast series Contextualizing Textiles, interviewing fiber farmers and textile artists. In 2021, she completed the “Rising: Climate in Crisis” residency at A Studio in the Woods and held a solo exhibition LaChaun Moore: 17845 at The Hilliard Museum in Lafayette, LA. In 2023, she joined the inaugural Braiding Seeds Fellowship, became an active member of the International Center of Indigo Culture to help build a regional dye initiative, and joined the board of the Surface Design Association. She has currently made her way back to the DMV area in hopes to build her farm there to be closer to her family.

Her work integrates creative fiber-making with deep plant and cultural research—an aesthetic “living archive.” LaChaun is developing a farm-to-fabric brand prioritizing environmental sustainability, social and historical equity, and ancestral knowledge.

I visualize a time-lapse of tree rings forming, mountains rising and falling, then the brevity of holding my tiny newborn baby. Moving in and out of macro and micro perspectives of time and change, my work uses printmaking, photography, sculpture, and painting as tools for curiosity and attention. The blurring of discipline boundaries is a physical expression of boundaryless places that I often explore. There are no tidy lines between forest and marsh, myself and my environment. Paying attention moment-by-moment is how I make sense of change and how I come to remember my sense of the sacredness of life.

Born in North Carolina and currently living in Maryland, Jamille Wallick is a mixed media artist influenced by the ecosystems of Atlantic coast states. She holds a BA of Dance Studies/General Anthropology, an M.ED in New Media and Global Education (Appalachian State University), and an MFA in Studio Arts (The George Washington University). Before moving to the DMV, Jamille worked as media instructor, freelance media artist, and dancer with SG Ballet in Boone, NC. She was also a Founding Member and President of community arts group, Verge Dance Collective. In 2022, Jamille was the recipient of a Keyholder Fellowship at Pyramid Atlantic Art, Hyattsville, MD, where she studied paper-making and printmaking. In October 2022, she installed a large-scale work: three 12′ sculptures, Pleiades Sisters, at Brunswick Beer and Cider in Brunswick, NC. In October-December of 2022 she also worked as an Associate Producer and Media Specialist on LEGACY: 50 Years of Dance on the Edge, an exhibition/immersive installation at the Corcoran FLAGG Building, Washington DC, with artists Maida Withers and Robin Bell. She currently works as a freelance multimedia artist and as an adjunct professor of Art and Media.

Image Credit: Jeff Goodman