Natalie Stopka Archives - Botanical Colors

Sunday Visit: Natalie Stopka, Materiality & Multitudes

For Sunday Visit, Botanical Colors sits down for an interview with a luminary in the natural dye, textile and art world. This week we visit with our resident Lake Pigment expert Natalie Stopka to talk about her upcoming workshop with us! Grab a cup of tea and settle in to learn about someone you never knew! Catch up on all our Sunday Visits HERE. What first sparked your interest into natural plant color? About 15 years ago I had the realization that instead of purchasing all the materials for a piece of art (an artist book in this case), I could … Read more

Easy How-To Make A Lake Pigment

Lots of you have asked us for a how-to on making lake pigments. We thought we’d skip an amateur tutorial from us and go straight to the pro… Lake pigment queen Natalie Stopka! If you don’t know Natalie, she’s an artist and educator who works in collaboration with the materials and forces of the natural world. Her drawings and prints incorporate plant dyes and historical pigments, which provide a seasonally evolving vocabulary of texture and color. We’ve been pretty obsessed with her work since the day we met her. For more information on lake pigments – their myriad hues, chemistry, … Read more

Sunday Visit With Artist & Educator Natalie Stopka

This week for Sunday Visit, we caught up with artist and educator Natalie Stopka (the mad scientist of lake pigments), in her upstate New York studio. In said studio, there are jars and vials of unusual color and tools for making extraordinary art. Natalie is pretty darn clear that these jars aren’t for show. They’re not time capsules of color. They’re 100% for making art and pushing what color and pigment can do. And after following her for years, we also love the dichotomy that is Natalie Stopka. That she loves lightfastness and fading. That she can talk about synthetic … Read more

Q&A With Artist + Educator Natalie Stopka

Last week we caught up with artist and educator Natalie Stopka (the mad scientist of lake pigments), in her upstate New York studio. In said studio, there are jars and vials of unusual color and tools for making extraordinary art. Natalie is pretty darn clear that these jars aren’t for show. They’re not time capsules of color. They’re 100% for making art and pushing what color and pigment can do. And after following her for years, we also love the dichotomy that is Natalie Stopka. That she loves lightfastness and fading. That she can talk about synthetic and organic in … Read more

Video From FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Natalie Stopka + Tilke Elkins

Last week we had a FEEDBACK FRIDAY alumni discussion with Natalie Stopka and Tilke Elkins! The two returned to FEEDBACK FRIDAY to have a conversation on ruderal plant color, orphaned materials and forging relationships through materiality at the margins. The two discussed unwanted, discarded, or simply forgotten things and following intuition as a practice of emergent design. If you’ve never been to a FEEDBACK FRIDAY featuring two former presenters in discussion you’re in for a treat. Watch the recording below. Check out these three previous matchups: Preserving history with Narayan Khandekar + Porfirio Gutíerrez Mapping Color With Sasha Duerr + Maibe … Read more

For World Water Day, 10 Ways to Natural Dye & Protect Land & Water

For World Water Day on March 22, 2023, we wanted to shine a light on two things very important to us: keeping carbon in the soil and protecting our water. As natural dyers, we have so many ways we can tackle these issues from collecting and reusing water creatively to simply stopping using hazardous pesticides as we grow our beautiful dye plants. We hope our pointing you towards World Water Day 2023 can offer easy that ways you can be part. This World Water Day is about accelerating change to solve the water and sanitation crisis. And because water affects … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Ayobami Adeyemo

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with Ayobami Adeyemo. Ayobami Adeyemo is a textile researcher/artist who studies and experiments with different dyestuffs and textile making processes. He has worked on the Indigo Shade Map team to research and study different plants that produce indigo all over the world. As of now, he is managing his own personal project dubbed “Ore mi” which is Yoruba for “my friend” as a means of learning more about natural dye processes and communication through textiles. We met Ayobami through Rosa Chang, MICA and the Indigo Shade Map, an evolving online, interactive site that maps the … Read more