FIBER ART
My interest in fiber arts started at a young age admiring the North African rugs and ornately-embroidered Rajasthani throw pillows of my well-traveled grandmother. Through my own travels, I learned more about the hand-crafted textiles traditions around the world, from Madagascar to Morocco and Mexico to Laos. Combined with an interest sustainable fashion and cultural preservation, I worked with a textile social enterprise in Laos and now for the International Folk Art Market in New Mexico using film and photography to tell the stories of folk artists and their crafts. This passion for celebrating folk art and hand-crafted artisanship led me to my own explorations in textile arts.
I started by creating a living library of natural dyes samples, working on honing in on the dyeing process as it varies depending on the material, water, and dye. This led to exploring the use of plants I cultivated myself and locally-foraged ones as well as food wastes. I am interested in natural dye and handcrafted textiles as an alternative to mainstream processes that are highly toxic and damaging to the environment. The fashion industry is one of the major polluting industries in the world, the most polluting industry to fresh water. As a result I also work with non-toxic synthetic dyes to cut down on the use of water as well as secondhand materials. I also work in hand embroidery and screen-printing mainly designs of herbal medicinal plants. In the fall of 2021, I did an artist residency in Oaxaca in which I had the opportunity to learn natural dye techniques on wool with Zapotec natural dye artist Fermina Rodrigeuz.
Natural Dye Sample Library
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