Category: Residencies – collaborative community artmaking
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Textile arts workshops: embroidery, natural dyeing, weaving and more
Indigo dyeing workshops, NYC, 2019 In 2017, I began growing indigo from seed in my Brooklyn apartment after reading the legend of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, credited with having made indigo a North Carolina cash crop from 1745–75. Understanding the role enslaved laborers played in indigo’s success, including applying cultural knowledge of how to grow indigo…
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Natural Dye workshops with indigo, pokeberry, rudbeckia, 2018–2019
Indigo dyeing workshops, NYC, 2019 In 2017, I began growing indigo from seed in my Brooklyn apartment after reading the legend of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, credited with having made indigo a North Carolina cash crop from 1745–75. Understanding the role enslaved laborers played in indigo’s success, including applying cultural knowledge of how to grow indigo…
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Embroidering with seniors at Midwood Active Adults
Through my (Im)migration Lines Artist Residency at Wyckoff House Museum, sponsored in part by a Brooklyn Arts Council Community Arts Fund grant, I led embroidery and textile arts workshops for local seniors at Midwood Active Adults from January – June 2018. Workshops took place monthly, and included a visit and tour of Wyckoff House. I…
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(Im)migration Lines culminating exhibit, Wyckoff House, Formal Parlor
Text reads: I pledge allegiance to the flag of these (in)violate(d) States of America, many nations under Allah, Jesus, Adonai, threaded together, (de)segregated, removed from ourselves. Divided we fall, united we dream a new American Dream: libertad y justicia para todos. Pin It
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Harvesting indigo, late September
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Visiting Samek Art Center — Learning about parchment
Visiting the Samek Art Center, students got a preview of an exhibit of illuminated manuscripts. They also learned about parchment, or paper made from compressed animal skin. Parchment has a scent and a slightly rubbery texture. We all got to feel it, and students experimented with stitching through it, applying their new embroidery skills. In…
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Detail and delicacy
As students continued embroidering over several days, their technique quickly gained sophistication. As the Guest Artist, I wanted artmaking to enhance other art and academic areas. Foraging and learning about the science and chemistry of dyeing while visiting the Farm coordinated with Biology Professor Mark Spiro, who introduced students to the new Farm-in-progress, mentioning opportunities…
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Queen Anne’s Lace
While foraging, I looked for Queen Anne’s lace, rumored to make a golden-cream colored dye. I hadn’t much luck, except for a faint stain. I think many flowers are required, which is always true with plant dyeing — more plant matter, richer dye application. Bucknell University Biology Professor Mark Spiro taught me that the one…
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Foraging for dye and fiber plants at Bucknell University farm
On the first day of Arts First, Program Manager, Andrew Ciotola, Program Assistant, Dan Newman, Biology Professor, Mark Spiro and I led First-year students and Second-year mentors to Bucknell Farm, an in-process space with fields of wild flowers. Mark told students they could liberally pick flowers; I explained we would experiment with making dyes and…
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Indigo dyeing with resist stitching: Imagining Eliza (Lucas Pinckney)
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Breukelen Country Fair, September 2018
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Reinterpreting Eliza Lucas Pinckney’s shoes
Silk shoe inspired by Eliza Lucas Pinckney’s brocaded shoes. 2018. Embroidery on indigo-dyed silks sitting on a bed of Japanese indigo flowers going to seed. Note: the flowers are not dye-producing. It’s the leaves from which dye is made. Eliza is considered in common historical literature the “American mother of indigo.” She persisted in planting…
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Indigo-dyed fabrics so many ways…
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Indigo cold leaf dyeing with salt + carefully calibrated fermented, hot leaf bath
In exchange for space, soil, compost, beds, and overall farm support, kindness, generosity and good cheer, I led a free, public indigo-dyeing workshop on Governors Island on September 8th, 2018. Lots of friends, some of whom helped grow and transplant the indigo, former students and families with children participated. While I prepared a hot bath…
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Fall harvesting
Thanks to the talented Lily Maslanka for these photographs of the most recent fall harvest at the GrowNYC Teaching Garden. Lily has been experimenting successfully with extracting pigment from woad, while I’ve been wholly focused on using the Japanese indigo. Pin It