Feedback Friday Archives - Botanical Colors

Video From Live FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Mushrooms + Textile Design With Ximena Curiel

Last week on FEEDBACK FRIDAY, we welcomed Ximena Curiel who told us a personal story about her path as an artist and all about her exciting work with mushrooms and textile design! Ximena Curiel is a Product designer with a MSc in Biomimicry currently performing field and laboratory research on fungal pigments. Ximena says since she was young, “she experienced the kindness of nature, while growing up in the jungles of southeast Mexico.” From first hand observations, she’s watched how ecosystems have degraded while her love for all living things lead her to nurture connections between biology and design. She … Read more

Video From FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Social Artist + Activist Ellie Irons

Last week on FEEDBACK FRIDAY, July 29th, 9am Pacific, Noon Eastern, we welcomed socially engaged artist and educator Ellie Irons. Ellie talked about her Feral and Invasive Pigments project, a public fieldwork, writing, and studio-based project that revolves around making watercolor paint from the leaves, petals, and berries of the spontaneous plant beings (aka weeds) who thrive in areas heavily impacted by urbanization, industrialization, and climate change. Watch the recording here. Links: Instagram Website About Ellie: Ellie Irons is an artist and educator living and working on Mohican land in current-day Troy, New York, USA. From foraged watercolor paintings to … Read more

VIDEO From FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Marta Abbott

Last week was our 100th episode of FEEDBACK FRIDAY and we welcomed Rome-based, Czech-American artist Marta Abbott. Marta uses “organic, botanical materials to extract and convey that which she finds essential to the human experience of nature and beauty. Marta does this through combing concept with intuition, elements of control with those of contained chaos, and with eyes scanning both earth and sky, seeking ways to interpret that which links the two.” Watch the recording here. Marta’s website Instagram In the Studio: Marta Abbott Shop our dye inks here! ARTIST STATEMENT Marta Alexandra Abbott is a Czech-American artist in Rome. … Read more

Celebrate Juneteenth Through The Stories of 8 Black Natural Dye Artists

This year, as we celebrate and honor the (now federally recognized) Juneteenth holiday, we look back on the stories eight black, natural dye artists have shared with us. As we all continue to learn and grow from these stories, we urge you to reach out within your regional natural dye and fiber communities to usher in more diversity. If we have learned anything from FEEDBACK FRIDAY, it’s that we can tell so many stories through natural dyeing that gather more people, not always our choir, to get a little closer to us to just listen…and hopefully sing. About Juneteenth: From … Read more

VIDEO From FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Zak Foster Quilts

Last week on FEEDBACK FRIDAY, we had the amazing, thoughtful, community building, textile whisperer, Zak Foster of Zak Foster Quilts. Raised in rural North Carolina and now living in Brooklyn, New York, Zak is a self-taught artist whose work draws on Southern textile traditions while incorporating found fabrics and natural dyes with an eye for sustainability. He practices an approach to design that is intuitive and improvisational and he is drawn to preserving the stories of quilts and specializes in memory quilts and burial quilts. His work has been featured in various magazines, websites, and galleries. His online community, The … Read more

Video From FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Masagana Flower Farm & Studio

Last week on FEEDBACK FRIDAY, we had Manitoba, Canada based Lourdes Still talking about the Masagana Flower Farm & Studio. According to Here’s How It’s Done: First-hand Stories From Enterprising Women In Manitoba, “Lourdes Still is the first to admit it’s a winding road that landed her in business. She’s gone from big-city living in the Philippines to rural life in south-eastern Manitoba. From growing flowers on the balcony of her city apartment to launching Masagana Flower Farm & Studio. There’s no doubt that it takes ambition and a lot of hard work to run a small scale flower farm … Read more

Video From Live FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Carol Padberg

Last week on FEEDBACK FRIDAY we welcomed artist, writer, educator and founding director of the Nomad MFA Carol Padberg. Carol has an art and ecology studio where she weaves with living Oyster mushrooms, using yarn that is colored by plants from her backyard dye garden. She uses regenerative agricultural strategies to maintain a city micro-farm called Nook Farm House. Carol Padberg’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY presentation took us into the world of interspecies art, in which a flock of sheep, a dye garden, soil organisms, Oyster mushrooms and a human being weave their stories together. The resulting living textile art is designed … Read more

Video From FEEDBACK FRIDAY: The Art Of Soil

On our last FEEDBACK FRIDAY we had Karen Vaughan of The Art of Soil. Karen is a researcher, educator, and creative who is passionate about sharing soils knowledge and beauty with all who are open to receive. She is a pigment forager and paint maker as well as an associate professor of pedology at the University of Wyoming. Karen has long been fascinated by color – from the information we gather from color to the way it makes us feel and the unique connections we all have with color. Through the Art of Soil, she crafts watercolor paint made with … Read more

Video From FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Shradha Kochhar

On our last FEEDBACK FRIDAY we had Shradha Kochhar. Shradha, born in Delhi, India, is a textile artist and knitwear designer now based in New York. Best known for her home spun and hand knitted ‘khadi’ sculptures using ‘kala cotton’ – an inherently organic cotton strain indigenous to India, her work is at an intersection of material memory, sustainability and intergenerational healing. Focusing on generating a physical archive of personal and collective south Asian narratives linked to women’s work, invisible labor and grief, the work is large scale and will exist beyond whispers over generations. Check out Shradha’s work on … Read more

Video: FEEDBACK FRIDAY With Hari Baru Paris

Our last FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with Godelieve Keulen, the founder of Hari Baru Paris. Godelieve’s background is as a fashion designer specializing in knitwear but all of her designs are inspired by natural dyes. We found her through Instagram and fell in love with her beautiful zabutons, Japanese sitting cushions traditionally used for sitting on the floor. Watch the video recording here. From Godelieve: “I became interested in natural dyes during my sabbatical leave of 9 months in Kyoto, Japan. My husband was working at the university there. I immersed my self in the local artisanal crafts which one of … Read more