Our last FEEDBACK FRIDAY was a huge milestone for us as we prepared for our second to last ever FEEDBACK FRIDAY, featuring dear friends as well as alumnae, Katrina Rodabaugh and Liz Spencer.
Watch the video recording below.
The two shared mini presentations and then had a conversation together and with attendees on being caretakers as well as creatives. What are the challenges and successes to following our creative journey in natural dyes? When does a passion become work and what are some of the boundaries that we need to set to keep balance?
Katrina and Liz tackled all these questions and also talked about being “fragmented,” as a mother, as a maker, as a human trying to feel whole in this world. We got lots of lovely notes about this FEEDBACK FRIDAY. We hope you’ll feel inspired from this as well.
About Katrina Rodabaugh (from Katrina Rodabaugh):
“I’m a poet and fiber artist at heart—slow stitching and long poems forever. I also write, advocate, and organize special events like fiber-arts retreats and collaborative workshops. I’ve published three books, Make Thrift Mend (2021); Mending Matters (2018); and The Paper Playhouse (2015). But I’ve been writing poems and essays for as long as I can remember.
I love interdisciplinary thinking—I earned a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus in Environmental Studies and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing with a focus on poetry and book arts. I spent more than a decade working in nonprofit arts organizations but my fiber arts training started as a child at the side of my mother’s sewing machine. I currently live with my artist husband and our young sons in a two-hundred-year-old farmhouse in the Hudson Valley of New York. We grow dye plants, flowers, herbs, fruits, and vegetables while tending chickens and honeybees.”
About Liz Spencer of The Dogwood Dyer:
Liz Spencer of The Dogwood Dyer is an artist, maker, natural dyer, gardener, educator and mother. She has grown and foraged plants for color in various environments including urban and suburban. Her most recent experience of tending a dye garden between rows in a heritage orange grove in southern California on the cusp of an ever sprawling human population has taught her much about water conservation, waste stream tapping and how to push her craft in a more sustainable and environmentally sound manner.
Liz/The Dogwood Dyer, was a venture fellow at the Brooklyn Fashion and Design Accelerator (BF+DA) & holds an MA from the London College of Fashion where her studies focused on sustainable fashion and encouraging biodiversity in animal fiber knitwear. She taught fashion, sustainability, and natural dyeing at Parsons the New School and The Fashion Institute of Technology and has continually shared natural dyes in public workshops since 2012.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY
If you are not familiar with FEEDBACK FRIDAY, monthly we speak with dyers, artists, scientists and scholars about our favorite topic, natural dyeing and color. Curated by Amy DuFault, Botanical Colors’ Communications Director and co-presented by Botanical Colors’ Founder Kathy Hattori. Our last FEEDBACK FRIDAY presentation will be December 15th with both Kathy and I presenting!