ArtClothText

“Bottle the Sky” was an event held on the banks the Bow River in downtown Calgary, Alberta as part of the Choose Yer Own Festival…

…a festival based on sweet adventure, and built around a love for Calgary and the many great projects that happen here. Choose Yer Own is a collaborative festival. Anybody can put anything on, which means the festival is always unpredictable and surprising. The festival tries to use unusual venues that are all within biking distance of one another, encouraging exploration and interaction with the city.

My partner and fellow sky-gazer Kristofer Kelly devised the event, encouraging almost a hundred participants to collect water from the river, and then colour it to match the sky. Some chose to match the colour they saw, others attempted to recreate a sky from memory. Children, it seemed had an altogether different approach, understanding immediately that the whole point was to play with colour, creating some of the most incredible colours we saw that day.

The colours we used were naturally sourced excepting one jar with a few drops of blue food-colouring. Teas, spices, fruit juices and milk provided a palette for sunsets, stormy skies and the smoky haze of distant forest fires.

The stories that this experience elicited from its participants were funny, touching, sometimes romantic and even haunting. I was struck by how something so simple can inspire such spontaneous, meaningful communication between strangers. Thank you to each person who came by and took part in this event. We won’t soon forget the experience of bottling the sky with you.

I have just set a few jars in the sun to extract dye from walnut hulls and two Japanese dyes (names coming soon…) I purchased on my recent trip to Japan. I am experimenting with solar-extraction of dyes in order to decrease the amount of energy consumed in the dyeing process. This will work well for the walnuts, but I am considering constructing some kind of solar-oven for the others as they will likely require higher temperatures – both for extraction and the actual dyeing process.

As some of you may already know, natural dyeing processes are eco-friendly in certain aspects – they are often sourced from local, weedy and quick-growing plants for example. Other elements of the process however, like chemical mordants used to fix/alter colour and the consumption of both energy and water make them not much safer or sustainable than some chemical dyes.

It is my goal from this point to use as little energy and water as possible in my studio practice . (Yes using more locally sourced plant dyes is a logical next step, but you try and resist the temptation of Tanaka Nao Dyes in Kyoto!) Of course I realize that the overall impact of my small studio on the planet is minimal, even when I am using buckets of water and running the hotplates all day. I do feel however that any of us undertaking a materials based practice ought to consider not only the impact of our production on local ecologies, but also the conceptual relevance of care and mindful action in any studio utilizing the gifts of the natural world.

Assuming you arent all out gardening and enjoying the sunshine (it really is beautiful out there today!) I would love to hear from you. How relevant is it to you that your studio practice be ecologically sustainable? Have any strategies or tips for the rest of us? I would love to hear from you! The best responses will be collected for a future blog post…

For more images from my studio click HERE

Materialized from the soil, rain, and air around them, plants physically embody place. Plants also embody their individual histories, as well as the history of their species and its interactions with humans. Using gathered and cultivated plants as dyes I transfer their color to cloth with traditional dyeing techniques honed over centuries. The colors obtained are enriched by each plant’s historical, cultural, and physical substance as well as by the connection across time to all who ever worked within these traditions.

View more of Ricketts` work HERE

Obi cloth. Art installation. Kazuko Fukumoto

Chris Conrad is a fibre artist who discovered the remarkable coloring properties of unripe persimmons on a trip to Japan.

Made from the fermented juice of unripe astringent persimmons, the color comes from the tannin molecules linking together and forming a coating. More than a coloring agent, kakishibu also has strengthening, antibacterial and waterproofing properties. Kakishibu was used in China and Korea, but reached its ultimate utilization in Japan. It was used as a wood preservative, waterproofer, insect repellent, folk medicine, and on washi (Japanese paper), fans, parasols, clothing and in sake production.

Conrad’s fascination with kakishibu, led her to write a book on the subject “Kakishibu: Traditional Persimmon Dye of Japan” Both the book and kakishibu dye are available on her website kakishibuii along with picture galleries and a forum for fibre artists experimenting with this unique and fascinating material.

NSCAD U Visitor Presentation
Shellfish Purple Dyeing by Dr. Takako Terada
Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 12 noon in D500 (NSCAD Boardroom)

I have just finished updating my website and have included images of some new work.

Click the image above or HERE to be redirected to the website

Charlotte’s film In Search of Lost Colour: The Story of Natural Dyes will be Shown tomorrow evening at 6:00 pm in the Stanford Perrot Lecture Theatre at The Alberta College of Art + Design.

Artist Barbara Sutherland will present “Brilliant! Plant Dyes in Textiles and Art” in conjunction with Patterned Pleasure: Introducing The Jean and Marie Erikson Collection at The Nickle Arts Museum this Thursday, October 18, 2007 from 12:10 to 12:50 pm. Dont miss it!