Acclaimed Portland Artist Leads Fabric Arts Workshop

Margarita Jane Arguedas (also known as MJ) has been rising to acclaim in recent years. The Portland-based artist has an innovative practice of deconstructing knit fabric by hand. Her artworks transform threads into fascinating new forms. The works usually fill large spaces such as atriums—she once built an installation across the stage of TEDx Minneapolis. In all her projects, MJ engages with fabric as a living material. She calls it a meditation on interdependence, transformation, and the unseen forces that bind us.

Last fall, MJ’s public art project ‘Buoyancy’ was commissioned by Old Port Square and TEMPOart. The project opened to the public in November. Three compelling artworks are currently on view in Old Port Square through September 2026.

A Walking Meditation of The Old Port

To experience MJ’s works firsthand, you can start your journey on Exchange Street in the Old Port. You’ll see a signpost painted luminous yellow, pink and orange. In a glass signage box above is a three-dimensional artwork. Vibrant orange threads form a web-like structure. In the evening, it glows like a mystical portal.

Keep walking down the hill; take a right on Fore Street, then another right onto Union Street and you’ll find two more of these otherworldly creations (or, take the shortcut through Old Port Square, past Novare Res Bier Café). One stands at ground level and is absolutely stunning. Turquoise and deep blue threads have been woven together to form what looks like roiling waves. If you look closely, you can almost see the profile of a woman’s face peering down.

Walk a little further up the hill and on your right, you’ll see the largest of them all; a long, three-dimensional artwork attached to a concrete wall. It looks like a mountain-scape or the stormy sea—deep purple and black threads form a riveting, abstract artwork.

These are all part of the public art project 'Buoyancy.’ They were commissioned by Old Port Square in partnership with TEMPOart, a non-profit organization dedicated to commissioning temporary public artwork in Portland. Leading local artists were invited to apply for an opportunity to transform three existing signage frames into art—and MJ won the commission.

“Most recently, I've been utilizing the fabric as a means of capturing energy,” explains the artist. “Whether that's energy channels within our body, cellular structures, fascia, our nervous system, the electrical currents within our brains or neurotransmitters. I’m interested in all these different connections of energy; electromagnetic fields, the energy within space and time and the actual fabric of reality. My work is very conceptual in that sense.”

In her artist statement for ‘Buoyancy’, MJ explains that she was meditating on the endless threads of connection that make up the Old Port, its histories, life forms, and waters.

“Portland’s Old Port is host to dynamic ecosystems among a shoreline of memory, where tides carry stories reaching back to 11,000 BCE,” she wrote. “This fabric installation is a reflection on its waters and the countless threads they have woven—wildlife tracing ancient migration patterns, vessels crossing in trade, and lives entwined across time... The work is both map and memory, a living fabric that stretches beyond centuries into what is still to come.”

‘Buoyancy’ offers a delightful way to explore the four-acre district that makes up Old Port Square. The public art initiative is an important part of Old Port Square’s mission to reimagine the area into a distinctive urban destination. And MJ is encouraging the public to have fun while engaging with her art.

“You know, while I was installing these works, a lot of people would stop on the street and ask me, ‘Oh, is that a sign for something?’ And I would say to them, ‘Yes, this is your sign; to be here now!’ The art installation serves as a sign to be inquisitive, to step outside your normal ways of thinking.”

She laughs and adds, “I want to invite people to be curious.”

‘Buoyancy’ is on view to the public through September 2026. To register for the fabric art workshop on Saturday, April 25, please visit https://bit.ly/mj-workshop.