Paternal Great-Aunt/ Fibers Professor

A dedicated artist and educator, Dr. Ardis Maureen Rewerts was a beloved fibers professor at UT Austin whose academic work and studio practice helped elevate textile art within contemporary art education. Her fiber works were deeply conceptual, often reflecting on tradition, gender, and material memory. As a scholar, she guided many young artists in finding their voice through thread and fabric. As family, she stood as a bridge between ancestral craft and academic innovation—reminding us that fiber is both a form of making and a form of thinking. 

I never traced your voice through air,
no warmth of hug, no quiet care,
yet in the hush of fabric white,
I feel you flicker into light.

They say you stitched and wove with grace—
a rhythm I now chase and trace.
Before I held a hook or thread,
your hands had shaped the path I tread.

I was so young when you were gone,
too young to ask, to linger long.
But even then, they looked at me—
and said, “She’s just like Aunt Ade, you’ll see.”

An artist’s pull was in my chest,
a need to make, to craft, to wrest
beauty from the everyday—
a thread I followed your same way.

Your name—Aunt Ade—ghosts through rooms
where I arrange my tools and looms.
An echo sings in every skein,
a lifeline running through the grain.

I grieve not what we did not share,
but all the ways you still are there:
in woven strands, in softened twine,
in quiet acts of handmade time.

You left a trace beneath my skin,
a lineage etched deep within—
as if the craft I claim as mine
was lit by your unseen design.

So I will twist and loop and blend,
in dialogue that will not end.
And though we never met face-to-face,
I feel you here—in fibered space.

In knots I tie, in threads I bind,
I meet you in the work I find.
Dear Aunt Ade, artist, kindred flame—
I carry more than just your name.