The Session Details:

Annie Hogg is a visual artist based in Co. Tipperary, Ireland. Her work explores power relations and resources. Aiming to see both human and other than human responses and outcomes in human led situations. Material choices are made with an intention of furthering this commentary and questioning. Graduating in 2002 with a BA in sculpture from Aki College of Art in The Netherlands, she worked on environmental campaigns, studied organic horticulture and returned to a full time creative practice in recent years. She enjoys delivering engaging workshops, talks and lectures on her process and practice both online and in person in a host of settings such as Plants & Colour UK and The Burren College of Art. Awards and support have been received from the Arts Council of Ireland, Irish Hospice Foundation, Tipperary County Council Arts Office, South Tipperary Arts Centre and K-Fest.

Carolyn Sweeney is an artist who teaches classes on foraging for mineral pigments, making watercolors from scratch, botanical inks, and natural pigment crayons. She runs a business in Portland, Oregon called Strata Ink where she sells handmade natural pigment inks and crayons. She has a BA in Fine Art from Whitman College. After completing her BA she studied textiles as Oregon School of Art and Craft. but believes her most valued knowledge has come from time spent out on the land and tending to her multitude of natural color experiments in the studio. 

Natalie Stopka is an artist and educator focused on the material history of color and sustainable studio practice. She captures material and elemental interactions in her collaborative, experimental art practice. Her drawings and prints incorporate plant dyes and historical pigments, which provide a seasonally evolving vocabulary of texture and color. Natalie’s freelance studio and dye garden are located in Yonkers, New York. She holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and MFA from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. www.nataliestopka.com @nataliestopka

Julie Beeler is an acclaimed designer, artist, and educator inspired by the natural world. Her work has been featured by The New York Times, Popular Science, The Smithsonian Institution and The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, among others.

Julie created the Mushroom Color Atlas website to unveil and celebrate the resplendent chromatic universe hidden within the fungi kingdom, making it accessible to people around the world. Her book The Mushroom Color Atlas, recently published by Chronicle Books, is a comprehensive  primer on the universe of colors lurking inside fungi. It is equal parts art book, field guide, and dye-making workshop. In every form her effort  is a timeless reference that will be used for years to come. 

After a 20-year career at the vanguard of interactive design, Julie founded Bloom & Dye, a natural dye studio and farm in the Pacific Northwest ideally situated for foraging mushrooms, growing fresh-cut color, and creating fine art.

Lucy Mayes is an artist and pigment maker & researcher working in London and Hampshire. Her work as ‘London Pigment’ uses urban waste stream materials to make recycled pigment. Her practice is centred on the use of unusual, surprising or esoteric raw materials to make colour as a way of documenting events or ‘happenings’. Verdigris made from copper wire stripped from burnt-out mopeds, soot and ash from park fires and construction rubble have all been used in her work to make new pigments. Her colour-making practice centres on creating sustainable pigments from anthropocene waste streams. She works in the capacity of pigment/colour consultant and has worked with Neptune Interiors Ltd, Jaguar Land Rover, Royal Cornwall Museum, V&A, Kew Gardens on pigment projects. She previously worked as product developer and pigment specialist at renowned colourman L.Cornelissen & Son where she developed their historical pigment archive. She teaches pigment making at institutions nationally and hopes to re-orientate our connections to colour; through the creation of intimate relationships with matter formed through embodied making.

Flora is a natural colour maker, forager, illustrator, designer, and online learning enthusiast. She lives on the western edge of Dartmoor, where she grows, forages, and makes colour. She loves to experiment with making dye, print, and drawing materials for textiles and paper, developing new recipes and testing out plants. Her work is about place based natural colour making, and education. She is passionate about making plant based colour application processes for textiles and paper more accessible through online courses and events on this website as well as programming guest teachers on her learning platform plantsandcolour.com. Encouraging you to work with locally available plants to make vibrant and enduring colours for craft, art, and design practices.

Caroline Ross is an artist, writer and teacher living by the sea in Bournemouth. Her debut book ‘Found and Ground: A Practical Guide to Making your own Foraged Paints’ was published by Search Press in June 2023. She is writing the follow up about ancient and foraged drawing materials, ‘Drawn From the Wild’ to be published spring 2025. Using what nature provides and repurposing what humans discard are a large part of her practice. After the rooks have feasted on the riverbank, the empty mussel shells become paint palettes. The seasonally moulted flight feathers of local swans and geese become quill pens and brushes. Chalk dug out from their setts by badgers is left in piles in the woods, where she gathers it and take it home to make gouache. Caroline makes paints from foraged earth pigments from around the UK, and art tools and inks from natural, wild, and found materials such as oak galls, rusty nails, elderberries, bay leaves and cherry tree gum. The natural fluctuations of materials and the botanical ink stains or ochre paints forming prepared grounds on paper, all suggest forms with which she works.

Sophie Holt is the founder of PIGMENT - Organic Dyes, a socially conscious enterprise focusing on cultivating high-quality dye plants and supporting adults with additional needs in training and employment. With a background in facilitating adults with additional needs across Shropshire and Devon, Sophie's expertise lies in creating therapeutic environments that foster personal growth and skill development.

PIGMENT - Organic Dyes operates on the principles of sustainability, regenerative farming, and social inclusion. The enterprise offers a range of products including organic dyes, dye kits, and dyed fabric, all grown and processed using regenerative and organic farming methods. Sophie Holt and PIGMENT - Organic Dyes exemplify a commitment to environmental stewardship, social inclusion, and sustainable business practices. Through their work, they strive to make a positive impact on both individuals and the environment.