14 as an architectural building material. Strengell, who was born in Finland, had had a signif- icant textiles career in Helsinki before Eliel Saarinen, the architect of the Cranbrook campus, invited her to teach at Cranbrook Academy of Art. Under Strengell, the program empha- sized a relationship to industry and the design of upholsteries, draperies, and rugs (fig. 2)— an approach that Amaral replicated upon her return to Bogotá in 1955, where she set up an atelier employing local artisans to weave textiles for architects, interiors, and a fashion line that featured stoles, neckties, and mantas guajiras (indigenous dress of Colombia’s Guajira region). 7 Early slides of Amaral’s fashion textiles illustrate brilliant colors with varying textures, graphic patterns, and hanging threads that moved with the body. She based each manta guajira on a square and carefully plotted the garments out on graph paper, often naming each design with a woman’s name, such as Isidora, Claudia, and Matilde (figs. 3–4). Amaral’s work at the atelier allowed a freedom and experimentation in design and compo- sition that transferred to the artistic creation of her fiber works. “The functional work allows me to get rid of a lot of things—to release a certain energy,” Amaral explains. 8 The swing- ing fringe, brilliant colors, and graphic shapes reappear decades later in works such as Bosque I y Bosque II (Forest I and Forest II) (1998, pp. 88–89), a diptych in which individual Figure 2 Various fabrics made at Cranbrook Academy of Art by Olga de Amaral, c. 1954.