Foraging for Color
I began experimenting with using foraged plants and flowers and food scraps in my own kitchen as natural dye materials in 2017. For regular updates on this, head over to my IG feed: @sfurbanwanderer. For a fiber and textile fanatic who loves color, this was probably an inevitable exploration. I am the kind of person who takes photos like this at museums (from the Vasa Museet in Stockholm) and reads books like this for fun. As I began to learn […]
Weaving “The Possible”
I started a new project today, or rather, I picked up the threads of a project I first seriously took on in October 2009. I’m weaving at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive. Quick history: Over 4 years ago I bought a plywood laser cut backstrap loom from Travis Meinolf, aka Action Weaver. Having seen his weaving projects, I had mostly been inspired by his approach to craftmaking as an alternative to high art and capitalism. I got a chance […]
Shibori using a natural dye
I’ve been crazy about shibori, a resist dye technique, since I bought a piece of fabric in 1996 with the small tie dye geometric patterning. My romanticized idea of the process was that the cloth was tied around pieces of rice then submerged in a dye bath. It was only later I found out what the technique was called and how it worked (and I haven’t seen any substantiation for this idea I had earlier). I’ve since brought several other […]