I call Diane a silk artist, though she admitted to me that she didn’t always see herself as an artist. 

“I went between thinking that I’m a craft person and an artist,” she said. “But I got to that point where I can say I’m an artist.”

“Is that because some of the things you make can be used?” I asked.

“Right. And because it’s fabric.”

“Is there a prejudice against fabric?”

“I think so,” she said. “And I don’t understand it.”

Diane is not alone in perceiving a bias against fabric in the art world. Welsh-Canadian artist Alana Tyson wrote in her blog, Dangerous Women, “There remains a hierarchy in the art world; craft processes rank lower […] This extends even further; amongst crafts, textiles are one of the least well regarded.” 

In the February 2024 article for “The Great Women’s Art Bulletin” in The Guardian, Katy Hessel wrote, “textiles [are] art forms historically deemed as ‘decorative’ by the establishment because of [their] association with women’s work.” According to Katy Hessel, textiles have been considered a lower art form since the Renaissance, but was cemented as such by the Royal Academy in 1769, when they banned textile arts from its exhibitions.