Sunday Visit: The World of Arielle Toelke

Arielle Toelke’s visual work spans mediums, influences, and universes. She is always interested in adventurous collaboration. Arielle Paints Visions and uses a variety of mediums in her collages. She is the author of the Cooking Color Natural Dye Book. For this Sunday Visit, we learn how Cooking Color came to be, and the Aha! moment that drew her to natural dyeing.

Arielle! Give us your backstory. How did you come to be you? What was the moment where you started to work with natural dyes?

Ten years ago, I took an indigo dye workshop at an artists studio in Brooklyn. Who knew those two hours would have such a big impact on my life. After the workshop I immediately ordered all of the things to make a urea vat. If you know about indigo this is a very smelly vat and I didnt know any other way. That said, pretty soon everything in my apartment was blue and my curiosity for natural dyes and color grew from there.

I was fascinated with the ability to color shift with pH levels and began playing with himalayan rhubarb. I remember years ago emailing Botanical Colors and Kathy [Hattori] took the time to write me back and answer all of my questions. When I learned of mordant printing and the ability to print my own cloth I was extra hooked. I was always finding clever ways of getting my artwork on textiles, though embroidery or cyanotype, and this technique opened up a whole world of possibilities.

It’s been a fun adventure blending all of my interests with dyes, design, and color. What I love most about natural color is there is a never ending amount of information, color never gets boring.

You made a board game! Tell us about it, you have such a wonderful element of chance and play in your work, can you let us know a little bit about your process of making.

Everyone should play! My art centers around play, taking art off the walls into the viewers hands, literally. Play and games build community, and now more than ever, gets us off our screens.

I’m very interested in multifunctional objects that are well designed. As someone who travels a lot, a bandana is an indispensable accessory. I thought, how can I make a square of cloth better. Well, I put a game on it! When I started my Bandana Board Game collection I was adapting public domain games. Now, in my fifth year of designing I’ve been making and creating my own games. Sometimes the games start from an idea of game play, some start as a design I’ve been thinking of. Sometimes I want to create a game design around a theme, like my upcoming Losta Pasta Bandana Board Game.

It brings me so much joy to see peoples faces light up when they see one of my designs. The colorful graphics are a big draw with a bonus game. As a bandana wearer, they are always designed to look good worn as well as be a functioning game. Natural dyes are such an important part of my art practice, I hand dye the wooden playing pieces. The bandanas are a culmination of all of my loves, textiles, color, design, collage, natural dyes, and of course play.

Talk to us about Cooking Color!

I love color and natural dyes. Like, REALLY LOVE.

I’ve had a career as a makeup artist for film and television for almost twenty years (and still going!). Two years ago the industry was disrupted by the dual writers and actors strikes. I was out of work for eight months. As a doer and maker I really utilized that time to push myself in a direction I never thought of, to write a book! During this time I also started teaching natural dye and textile workshops and classes.

Cooking Color is not reinventing the wheel. There are plenty of great books out there using kitchen waste as dye materials. I wanted to make a book that was graphically interesting with a big lean on sustainability. It was also important for me to make the book accessible to everyone. It makes natural dyeing more experimental than formulaic and trying to replicate projects in a book. Starting a new craft is intimidating and Cooking Color really breaks dyeing down to the basics. I included a culinary recipe section that leaves the cook with waste for natural dyes. Tying in practical application, circularity, and sustainability in a way that other dye books have not.

When you say you paint visions, tell us about that. Your work feels like you are channeling something. You also created a tarot deck. Was this part of that process?

My process for creating varies. Sometimes I have a really clear vision of what the end product will look like and sometimes less so. I was recently working on a new bandana design that had been in my head for over two years. It did not come out like I had envisioned in my mind’s eye or what I had doodled, but it came out the way it was supposed to in the end. I used a mix of cut paper collage then worked it digitally.

I love cards as a way of presenting a body of work. It’s a real way for any artist to work on a large series with “ground rules” that everyone follows. I’ve been fascinated by tarot since I was a kid and for most of my life had dreamed of creating my own deck. During the pandemic lock down I really found my way with cut paper collage. I had dabbled in it all of my life but during that time I really leaned into the medium and found my style. I was designing the first of my Bandana Board Game series at the same time and just was grooving with piles of paper and scissors. The materials were easily accessible and is a fairly clean way of working, especially when your apartment is your studio. I don’t think I thought too hard about why I was making the tarot deck, it sort of just flowed out of me. I worked suit by suit with no real plan starting off. In the end, it was a great cathartic undertaking during the pandemic. It gave me something to work on and distract me from all the noise going on in the world.

What feeds your creativity?

The world. I am infinitely curious about everything. Travel is definitely high on my list as well as visiting cultural institutions and spending time outdoors. Being around other artists and creatives definitely gets me inspired. I love reading and going to museums, and playing around in my studio. But a great meal with a friend can be just as inspirational too.

Do you have anything coming up we should know about?

I’ll be teaching two long form workshops this year. The first in May at SnowFarm is called Layered Textures, where we will be designing, silk screening mordant pastes, then finally embroidering on top of our designs.

The second in July at Sanborn Mills Farm called Designing Patterns for Textiles. This class will be heavily focused on design and we will realize our designs with a few different mordant pastes and a colorful array of natural dyes. We will be making silk screens in a variety of analog ways.

Both classes are 4 days long meaning we have plenty of time to deep dive into design and technique.

I have two new bandana designs coming out later this year (stay tuned @four.rabbit) and I just completed the artwork for a deck of playing cards. Not sure exactly where the cards will end up, but it was certainly fun to create.

If you were a color, what color would you be?

Is this a trick question? Haha. I could never be just one color, though hot orange is my current color obsession these days.