ative urge—pulled her from her work as a

minister and led, eventually, to the loom.

Sacred TextAs a child in Louisville, Kentucky, Susan

grew up in a world infused with head

and heart—a world of academia, church,

and scripture. Her mother was an atten-

tive homemaker and accomplished seam-

stress, “an artisan of very practical

things,” Susan says, recalling the beautiful

clothes and decorative items her mother

lovingly made in her basement sewing

room. Her father, a learned minister, pro-

fessor, and the respected dean and

provost at the Southern Baptist Theo-

logical Seminary, captivated Susan with

his masterful weaving together of the

intellectual and spiritual. After college at

Baylor University in Waco, Texas, she set

off to find her own theological footing in

preparation for the ministry, enrolling at

the decidedly non-conservative Harvard

Divinity School, where the study of world

religions and rigorous feminist critiques

were transforming religious studies. After

earning her Master of Divinity degree in

1982, Susan became the first Baptist

woman ordained in the state of

Louisiana, where her family then lived.

Seeking a denomination that was more

welcoming to women, Susan also re-

ceived full clerical standing in the United

Church of Christ (UCC, the umbrella

denomination for Congregational churches)

and served a Congregational church in

Maine, as chaplain at a psychiatric hospi-

tal in San Francisco, and then at the

Circular Congregational Church in

Charleston. By all accounts, her gifts and

talents were well-suited to the pulpit. “I

think Susan may be the best preacher I’ve

ever listened to,” says her former col-

league and Circular Church senior pastor

Bert Keller. Nonetheless, after 18 years in

ministry, Susan felt drawn to follow an

unknown thread—to move on. She left

the church to explore new—and still

undetermined—creative directions.

“I loved being a minister, especially the

work of interpreting sacred texts, delving

into the ancient poetry and familiar Bibli-

cal passages to discover fresh meaning to

bring forth in sermons,” Susan explains.

“The problem was the sacred texts I

loved were written by men. That didn’t

make them less valuable or beautiful to

me, just woefully incomplete.” There

M A Y 2 0 0 6 | 123

loom1 , v: to appear indistinctly, come

into view.

loom2, n: a machine in which yarn or

thread is woven into fabric by the crossing

of vertical and horizontal threads (called

respectively the warp and the weft).

—New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

Profiles don’t usually begin with def-

initions, but this one is concerned

with the meaning of words. It’s a

story about weaving—specifically, about

the way the two meanings of “loom” have

found themselves interwoven in the life of

textile artist Susan Hull Walker. Twelve

years ago, a growing awareness of some-

thing—an indistinct but compelling cre-

122 | C H A R L E S T O N

B Y S T E P H A N I E H U N T • P H O T O G R A P H S B Y L A R R Y M O N T E I T H

A minister-turned-artist weaves together the spiritual and material

the charleston profile

••

▼

Woman of the ClothS U S A N H U L L W A L K E R

Tools of the Trade: Susan weaves intricately detailed

tapestries utilizing numerous threads of various colors and

textures strung from the wooden shuttle (above).

A Woman’s Touch: Vibrant colors and interwoven textures are both key elements in Susan’s work. Throughout

her home these elements are on display, both in her own work and in items she has collected from her travels

around the world. Pillows, tapestries, and exquisite throws make it a warm, inviting place.

•

CP-Susan DESIGN:CP-Susan DESIGN 4/18/07 4:16 PM Page 1

lish, stitch, and quilt—basically everything

one can do to a piece of fabric after it is

manufactured. Her trademark was a ravish-

ment of color in saturated, passionate

hues. Yet even after several successful

shows featuring her dyed and embellished

silks, including an international exhibit

with American Artists for Diversity in Mar-

rakech in 1999, Susan still felt she had not

found her artistic core.

“I was never satisfied with the results I

could get through my sources of raw

cloth. Finally my professor looked me in

the eye and said, ‘You have to make it

yourself,’ and I realized she was right.” The

M A Y 2 0 0 6 | 125

were Biblical stories about women, but

no words by and for women, she adds,

“and in the end, these I simply had to

have. I wanted to know what a sacred

text would look like, one that was com-

posed by the hearts of women, that

smelled of their experiences, that shone

with their minds.” And so she found her-

self drawn to a different kind of text, not

a weaving together of words and ideas

but of actual tactile threads, of textiles,

traditionally made by women.

Putting aside her clerical vestments,

Susan began taking classes at Savannah

College of Art and Design (SCAD), invest-

ing herself in the study of cloth, of the lit-

eral fabric of people’s lives. “I have always

loved cloth and been fascinated by its use

in celebrating rites of passage across all

cultural and religious traditions. At birth,

coming of age, marriage, and death, spe-

cial cloths wrap the body and carry one

across lifecycle thresholds. I love how

cloth holds and contains us. Its tactile,

connective language implicitly commu-

nicates values that are important to

women,” says Susan, who surrounds her-

self and her home with vibrant color and

intriguing textures—sarongs, pillows, tap-

estries and artfully draped throws create

an inviting, sensual delight.

During her first five years studying the

fabric arts, she focused on surface design,

learning to dye, silkscreen, batik, embel-

124 | C H A R L E S T O N

Body of Work: Before she began to weave her own fabric, Susan focused on surface design, experimenting

with dye, silkscreen, stitching, and other forms of altering manufactured fabric (above). Susan’s trademark has

become passionate, feminine hues which she creates through a complex dying process (above right).

•

“I have always loved

cloth and been

fascinated by its use

in celebrating rites

of passage across all

cultural and

religious traditions.”

—Susan Hull Walker

Weaving is a physical, muscular craft,

but Susan brings to it both an artist’s

sensibility and a minister’s soul,

steeped in symbol and metaphor.

Color Culture: Susan found the elaborate dyed silk

ikat robe that hangs on the wall of her office while

traveling in Turkey.

•

CP-Susan DESIGN:CP-Susan DESIGN 4/18/07 4:16 PM Page 3

126 | C H A R L E S T O N

next month Susan took a course in

weaving. “I immediately realized, this is it,

this is what drew me to cloth in the first

place,” she says.

The Crossing PointWeaving is a physical, muscular craft, but

Susan brings to it both an artist’s sensibil-

ity and a minister’s soul, steeped in sym-

bol and metaphor. “Weaving is the bringing

together of oppositional forces, the taut

warp threads (fixed vertically on the loom)

and the more interpretive weft threads

(brought by a wooden shuttle horizontally

across the warp),” she explains. “When the

loom is warped, it’s a rigid, imposing struc-

ture. I liken it to my inherited religious tra-

dition—very orderly and masculine.

“Then I bring to it the shuttle of weft

thread, which is spontaneously chosen

and fluidly added, which corresponds to

my felt experience as a woman. Where

the two intersect, there’s an encounter, a

meeting, a crossroads. The tension

between the warp and weft is everything

in weaving. Symbolically, that’s where I

Prayer for Peace: In February of 2005, Susan

opened the Little Gallery at Mepkin Abbey with the

21-piece textile exhibition entitled, “Why Not Be

Turned into Fire? Hand-Woven Studies of the Body at

Prayer.” The exhibit, exploring the cycles of the

interior, contemplative life, inspired by the Tallit, the

Jewish Prayer shawl, reflected the importance of

spirituality in Susan’s life and work.

•

CP-Susan DESIGN:CP-Susan DESIGN 4/18/07 4:16 PM Page 5

want to live, at that intersection, at the

heart of the matter.”

In her upstairs studio, baskets bulge

with rectangular swaths of multi-textured

fabrics—silky soft fibers, an occasional

feather or golden tuft interwoven, loose

threads and unfinished ends from various

pattern trials—giving testimony to the infi-

nite possibilities of marrying warp and

weft. “I was just playing with all this, seeing

what works, what I like and don’t like,”

Susan explains. Many of these turned out

to be rough drafts for an extended textile

essay, a 21-piece installation which became

the inaugural exhibit at the Little Gallery at

Mepkin Abbey last February.

Entitled, “Why Not Be Turned into Fire?

Hand-Woven Studies of the Body at

Prayer,” the exhibit was a three-part series

exploring the cycles of the interior, con-

templative life inspired by the Tallit, the

Jewish Prayer shawl. The spiritual subject

matter brought forth with artistry and

accomplished execution was an inter-

weaving itself, a commingling of minister,

material, and muse.

“I’ve watched Susan go deeper and

deeper into the cloth,” says fellow artist

and former studiomate, McLean Stith.

“She’s gone from exploring its external

qualities, dyeing voluptuous colors on silk

and doing exquisite embroidery, to the

M A Y 2 0 0 6 | 129128 | C H A R L E S T O N

Function & Art: The color and design on this hand-

woven Guatemalan huipil identifies the village in which

it was made.

Foreign Exchange: Susan has traveled extensively, studying the textile-rich cultures of Central America and the Near East. In the mountain village of Santiago Atitlán,

Guatemala, she learned the age-old process of weaving on a backstrap loom (pictured) which involves stretching a loom tied to a tree; the weaver keeps the loom taut by

affixing it around her back while performing the weaving in her lap.

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lage of Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, to

learn the ancient technique of weaving

on a backstrap loom (women wear the

loom wrapped around their back and tied

to a tree, weaving in their laps) she was

struck by the fertility symbolism. “Creat-

ing the cloth was like giving birth. I felt

this incredible connection with centuries

of women—for thousands of years weav-

ing has been a woman’s language, a way

to express what’s most meaningful and

important to them.”

Immersing herself in the non-verbal,

maternal world of thread and fiber doesn’t

seem all that different from her ministerial

work, Susan claims. “I feel I’m weaving my

words, or sermons, now in cloth. I’m

pulling threads from a vast and ancient

web of women’s experience. And as I do, I

feel like I’m becoming, ever more authen-

tically, a woman of the cloth.”

130 | C H A R L E S T O N M A Y 2 0 0 6 | 131

actual crux of weft and warp—unraveling

the symbolism of fabric itself. Her earlier

work was prismatic, now it’s much more

elemental and unadorned as she moves

toward the heart of weaving.”

Susan’s search for a distinctly feminine

expression of spirituality has indeed led

her toward the heart of weaving. Both on

her own loom and through travel and

intense study of women weavers in tex-

tile-rich cultures such as Turkey,

Guatemala, and Mexico, she has followed

a thread—a woman’s and artist’s intu-

ition, if you will— and the discoveries

have been surprising. “In western Mexico,

the Wixárika Indians have no word for

‘weaver’ because all women weave,”

Susan remarks. “Their cosmology, their

spiritual understanding and creation sto-

ries are all rooted in weaving metaphors.”

When Susan traveled to the mountain vil-

A Spiritual Display: Susan putting the finishing

touches on her Mepkin Abbey exhibition (top). With her

husband, Trenholm, at the Mepkin opening (bottom.)

Contributing editor and freelance writer

Stephanie Hunt lives in Mount Pleasant.

••

“I’ve watched Susan

go deeper and

deeper into the cloth.

She’s gone from

exploring its

external qualities to

the actual crux of

weft and warp—

unraveling the

symbolism of the

fabric itself.”

—McLean Stith

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