To Feed The Head, The Heart and The Hands - By Annie Hogg

During 2020 lockdown, Flora Arbuthnott of Plants & Colour gave a call out for a new Study Group series based around plants and colour, obviously enough! We began as we continue today, with each term or round running for a 6 month period and meeting once a month for a two hour Zoom call. Having signed up out of interest to connect with like-minded folks, I could not possibly have fore seen then just how important these monthly meet ups were to become to me.

Our group, known as the Morning Group, still holds some original members, along with many new members and those who return when life allows. We share our experiments and perhaps even more importantly our ethos. We are united by our common desire to experiment with colours and materials from natural sources, but also the desire to connect to our landscapes, and to be involved in generating alternatives in our own practices and in our greater communities.

We are a collection of international dyers, paper makers, curious chemists, community facilitators, hedge ink makers, growers, spinners, textile artists, photographers, indigo aficionados and experimenters to name only some.

We share our various material knowledge freely, not only about our own practices and findings, but also about our cultural settings, from historical and present perspectives. There are many rabbit holes to run down after each meeting, and I have a recommended reading list as long as my arm to be getting through!

The sense of true connection that this group has fostered is both a privilege and a life line to be a part of. I have brought many conundrums to the group. Anything from how to successfully dye nylon in a rust bath, to “would this be a good idea for a funding proposal”. We all do and, it has to be noted, with far more interesting questions than mine. Without fail, advice, experience and support is collectively offered.

There is a feeling I have been mulling around for a little while now and it is this. When our Study Group first began, it was during a time of renewed or relatively new interest in sustainable practices. It was part of a larger movement of interest which, in the back of my mind, I admit I thought with regret, was just a fad. But now I am delighted to say that my mind has changed to thinking that far from a momentary show of tokenism, natural based practices are in fact at the forefront of a new revolution in craft and art. And that instead of dwindling, we are enabling each other to push through limits of materials and mindsets. To paraphrase a telling comment by one of our group members - we are picking up where people left off when the advent of synthetic production interrupted the advancement of the natural materials.

It is exciting and vital to be connected to people who share in this ethos and who are both curious and active in seeking some of the answers. It feeds the mind, the heart and the hands.

I look forward, without fail to each monthly meeting. Revelling in seeing all the lovely faces pop up on the screen, and catching up with each other’s findings and news from the previous month. I always step away with excitement at the potentials which undoubtedly get raised, and consider myself very lucky to be included in this band of colour makers.

Written by Annie Hogg - https://www.anniehoggstudio.com/

Ruby Tayor / Native Hands

This is part of a series of blogs featuring inspiring makers who work with local natural materials.

Intimacy with the landscape, the living world, plants, earth, other creatures, has always been meaningful to me as a place of connection and belonging. So it feels completely natural to create with these materials. On an aesthetic level I feel a kinship with the textures and colours; with handling and manipulating clay and plant fibres. I think it’s in our DNA as humans to use our hands to create with these materials. I’m a gardener, growing flowers and fruit, and caretaking the places where I gather my materials. I have to work and create with my hands, it’s a kind of compulsion, an existential need. My practice means spending time outdoors in the natural world, often wandering and observing, it feels like home. I pay attention to the plants, the tress and sky; animals around me, the birds and the insects. The sensory experience of the whole process is a strong feature in my practice. 

I feel strongly about not adding more stuff to the world, so working with materials and processes which are essentially low impact and degradable, pretty much a circular system, sits comfortably with my ecological concerns.

I live in Sussex at the foot of the Downs; I grew up near the Chilterns, which are also chalk; the ecosystems of both places are really similar, so I’m familiar with the plants, I’ve known them all my life. I’ve spent a lot of time in the last 10 years exploring which plants can be used for weaving, extracting fibres, creating forms. 

In Sussex we’re also part of the Weald, an area rich in clay. I’ve sampled clays from many different sites and found ones that have good plasticity and integrity, and are clean enough to work with straight from the ground. I hand build, mainly using the coiling technique, in my small garden studio. I fire my pieces outdoors in the woods, either open firings or clamp kiln firings, producing low fired earthenware. The process is physical and elemental, it mirrors the very origins of ceramics- earth, wood and fire. It’s unpredictable and I like this, removing control and allowing all the variables to come into play- the weather, the firewood, the clay that came straight out of the ground only a few metres from the fire.

Plant-wise, I work with bramble, bark, rush, reeds, grass, wild rose, various leaves. I mostly forage my own materials but sometimes source from other people who harvest in larger quantities. There’s a certain insecurity inherent in relying on foraging my materials- availability varies from year to year depending on the growing conditions. I live in a densely populated county and many of my materials come from marginal places. These places are under threat from cultivation, development etc. Although I caretake as I harvest, to support the plants’ health and vigour, sometimes I’ll go to gather and find everything unexpectedly cut back by a landowner. I have a mind map of plants around where I live; it probably extends to about a 20-mile radius, but wherever I go I’m always looking around at what’s growing where, and how it’s doing.

I use a wide variety of basketry techniques, whichever works best for the plant material at hand. I don’t have a preferred method/material; I appreciate the variety and the challenge of a broad approach. The techniques have been used by humans for millennia and remain more or less unchanged. Sometimes when I’m making, I have a sense of being part of a lineage, a continuum of makers that stretches back to distant palaeolithic times; it’s mysterious and moving. 

I’m interested in the dialogue between myself, my hands, and the materials. There’s often a good deal of trial and error involved in the process of making, as I get familiar with it. Sometimes I make series of pieces, often I make pieces that are one-off, responding to the particularities of the material. I’m drawn to making vessel forms. There’s a certain fullness and stillness that resonates, creates a sense of presence. The space within, a fertile void; the outer form a skin under tension: a dynamic between the two that is compelling. 

In recent years I’ve made a couple of large-scale site-specific sculptural pieces, using materials foraged on site: a 7-metre-high archway in ancient woodland, and a suspended netted structure made of 70 metres of hay rope, both at Wakehurst, Kew. I relished the challenge of the open briefs of those works, responding to the place and the plants. 

My current work is smaller: coiled grass vessels, various types of grass, and clay vessels. Pieces on a domestic scale, for interiors. Covid restrictions over the past year have given me more studio time; much of my work is often running courses in the woods for adults, supporting them in foraging materials to make baskets and pots. I get a lot of satisfaction from facilitating these experiences for people; I’ve also appreciated having more time recently to get into the rhythm of my own making.

My woodland courses season runs April- November, in Sussex, details on my website. I sell work through my website shop once or twice per year, and sometimes show work elsewhere. I send updates about all this via a monthly-ish newsletter https://nativehands.co.uk/subscribe-to-newsletter/

www.nativehands.co.uk @nativehands.uk

Grégoire Fournier

Featured Artist Series

This is part of a series of blogs featuring inspiring artists and craft people who work with local natural materials.

I am a self-taught artist, who live and work in Lyon, France. I explore the world of plant-based colors and my art include works on paper, photographs and videos, as well as songs and poems.  I want to create an immersive colourful experience throughout my work and pay tribute to the plants, by showing the healing beauty and fragile vibrance of the colours they give us. 

"Le passage" (crossing) - Buckthorn leaves on wooden boat on sea made of red cabbage ink - Photograph 2020

"De l'encre au pigment, de la mer à la montagne" (from ink to pigment, from sea to mountain) - Madder Lake - Photograph 2020

The whole process of making inks from plants, from picking to “cooking”, is my main source of inspiration and the object of my artworks. 

The ink-making process is always unique, especially when working for the first time with a certain plant. I often see it as a ritual, as a moment when I need to be firmly rooted in what I am doing. I love the sounds, the smells, and of course all the emerging colours. Sometimes unexpected colours. When the ink is ready, I love improvising with it on papers, making stains, mixing it with other natural ingredients or other inks. I also love writing the first lines of a song or poem: about my encounter with the plant, the emotions that its colours made me feel, its name, the history and traditions it carries with it. 

Sophora lake pigment and wooden masher

Althea flowers and my hand

Above all, I love experimenting and creating in a very intuitive way, see what the colours have to say, and what textures I can create with them. I like to think that I am just following the energy of the ink or plant, just as I if I was letting myself go in a river’s flow.  During that journey, I enjoy making mistakes and usually see them as a great opportunity to make up new things. 

Besides works on papers, I also talk about the magic of natural colours and dyeing plants through photographs and videos. With the photographs, I create a whole new scenery or landscape where the plants and colours are the main subjects. In order to so, I use dyed textiles, dried plants I cooked as part of the dying process, and some natural materials I found during my walks. I imagine rituals during which I pay tribute to the plant, and to the colours they give us as gifts. Through videos, I intend to show the magical journeys of plant-based inks on paper, and their unforgivable colourful encounters. I want people to witness what happened on the paper, before the inks dried out. I believe videos can offer an immersive experience, a way of meditating with colours and traveling freely into an imaginary world. 

Why do you choose to work with natural materials?

Working with natural materials is very meaningful to me.  It allows me to really connect to the place I live and to the natural world, to grow roots where I live, follow the seasons and always learn new things. Nature offers unlimited possibilities, and so many opportunities to create and make up new processes, new techniques, new ways of expression. To me, it is the greatest source of inspiration, the greatest source of materials, tools, textures. Art is everywhere in nature. Sometimes we just need to take a break, look around us and appreciate the beauty of what nature offers. I think it is the very first step of the creative process. As for natural colours, they are very vibrant, powerful, full of life, even if they are supposed to be more fragile. Colours, are just like anything else; they disappear at some point. But the memories and relationships we, as human beings, build with them, last through time.  

"Birth" - vegetal inks on cotton paper 40x40 cm - 2020

"Chèque en bois" - vegetal inks on check - 2020

Taking Over - Red cabbage ink on paper 70x50 cm - 2020

Where do you live and how does this influence your process of working with natural materials?

 I live in Lyon, the second most populated city in France. Even if I am constantly dreaming of living and working in the countryside, close to nature, I think work needs to be done in cities. Using natural resources from the city (I find many things through the seasons) is also a way of showing that we need more nature in our urban environments. I think it is essential to make the inhabitants aware about the natural wealth of their city so they start taking care of it and asking for more: more trees, more parks, more flowers, more plants, more animals. Less cars, less concrete. More than ever, cities need to change and as an artist, I want to be part of this change and inspire others to embrace it. I am now working on two different collective garden projects in Lyon, where we just started growing dyeing plants for artistic and educational purposes. 

I prefer using plants that I pick during walks in the city, in the nearby countryside or from my mother’s garden. In Lyon, I explore the city in search of dyeing plants. I can find and use Sophora Japonica flowers, buckthorn berries, pomegranate flowers, celandine, tree leaves from branches that fell down, blackberries, elderberries… I also love using edible plants and I admit I have a passion for red cabbage even though its colors are known to be very fragile to light. 

I love the idea of working with plants that I already know and that I shared memories with. Behind each color there is a very special story to tell and this is also what I want to share with people. Having to follow the seasons is also very meaningful: it contributes to make the picking and ink-making or dyeing kind of unique. It teaches patience, gratefulness for what nature gives us, and allow us to grow roots where we live. 

"Rêve de jardin" (Garden Dream) - Fresh Madder ink on torn piece of paper, black wallnut ink with nib pen - 2020

PlantKeepers, vegetal inks on paper (Sophora, Indigo and Wallnut), drawing with nib pen

 Since last Fall, I have been working on two different series of works on paper called “Taking Over” and “Birth”. I just moved into a new workplace which allow me to work on bigger formats and I am actively looking for artistic residencies. I am also working on several songs I wrote about each plant I use. Lastly, I am working with Sustainable Art Market and developing new projects with the artists who are part of this platform. 

People can follow my work on my website, gregoirefournier.com, where they can discover the current series I am working on and watch full-length videos. 

You can find me on Instagram: @gregoirefournier. I am also posting on @chou.rouge, a page dedicated to the blue made out of red-cabbage (“Le Bleu du Chou Rouge”).

Caroline Ross

Featured Artist Series

This is part of a series of blogs featuring inspiring artists and craft people who work with local natural materials.

Caroline living in the woods for a week just off to get water, nettles and chalk

My creative practice changes with the seasons and the years, responding to gluts and shortages in foraged goods, gift ochres arriving from friends, feathers moulted by the swans, a finding-trip to a new environment. It has not always been so. For many years I told myself what to do, what I was allowed to do, to draw, to make. How I came to be mainly free of the vice-like grip of the machine is a meandering story, but here’s the gist. 

Artwork in current Dark Mountain Fabula

After 6 years at art college, and an MA in Painting from Chelsea School of Art, in 1996 I still had no clue where I could belong in the London art world. I have drawn since I could hold a pencil, and that’s why I wanted to be an artist, drawing gives permission to pay attention to the world in detail. That inquisitiveness was why my other love at school was science, particularly chemistry and physics. I had a fantastic 2-year Foundation course at Shelley Park, Bournemouth, a dedicated foundation art college taking up the whole of the historic home of Mary Shelley and her son, where she came to live after the death of her husband the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Here I had been shown real gold: colour theory, drawing skills, printmaking, photography, ceramics, textiles, and so much more, by people passionate about their work and about teaching. Stepping out into the world 6 years later, I knew that my enthusiasm and multiple artistic inclinations would see me labelled as eccentric, or worse, the dreaded insult: earnest. So, like so many artists before, I formed a band, and for 10 years played music, sung, toured the world and recorded records, formed a record label, co-ran our recording studio, all in a team; because to make art this way with others using sounds and words felt right.  

Ink drawing from autumn 2020, oak gall ink on rag paper.

When I was living up in Aberdeenshire, visual art slowly came back into my life, and I have Deveron Arts (now Deveron Projects) to thank for that. Being part of a wider art scene in a much more sparsely populated rural area meant that when we put on an event or had something musical or creative to teach or show, that there was an audience who were not jaded or overwhelmed with a panoply of events. The world of individual artists as megastars seemed very far away, (despite our old ‘gang’ in London having included Turner Prize winner, due to my then husband co-founding the studios and gallery, Cubitt Artists). Now, surrounded by trees and deer, hawks and rivers, I found the seeds of a new way to make art, that would flourish when I returned to London in 2006, mainly to study more deeply with my T’ai Chi master, after 6 years away.

Basket of materials which lives next to my drawing desk

Finding The Dark Mountain Project in late 2014 changed the course of my art life again. I had returned to drawing with a passion and was studying Renaissance and traditional art materials at The Royal Drawing School with Daniel Chatto. When I read Paul Kingsnorth’s ‘The Wake’ after it gained a glowing review in the Guardian and did something I rarely do: looked up the author. This led me to Dark Mountain, and to going to their events, submitting art and writing, and now, years later, finding DM near the core of my artistic practice, how I show work, and who I collaborate with. Here at last, and also now with The Wilderness Art Collective, I found a broad group of artists and writers, makers and thinkers who also create work in the context of our living planet under great threat. It seems to me slightly ridiculous to make art of any kind that wilfully ignores this existential planetary predicament. Business as usual is the way of commerce and politics, and almost to be expected. But seeing this common in cultural worlds was depressing. In 2017, when asked by Paul to introduce myself to participants on a workshop I was teaching at Way Of Nature’s ‘Fire and Shadow’, a voice from inside me blurted out, to my own great surprise, ‘I am a devotional artist.’

Small works in handmade natural watercolour paint on deer parchment for Dark Mountain Sanctum

The last 4 years have been a journey into finding out what that spontaneously uncivil savant meant. ‘Devotion’ is an unpopular term, old-fashioned perhaps. But it sums up how I feel about earth.

Grave goods

So far, this journey means no longer dictating form. It means using almost entirely natural materials, foraging and finding, reusing and researching. The inconsistencies and quirks of materials which are not machine-made keeps me attentive and absorbed. Time and practice have synthesised 25 years of T’ai Chi and Tao, my love of bushcraft and wilderness skills, and my drawing and crafts into one thing. Often this takes the form of drawings with a quill pen in iron gall ink on deer skin parchment and paper books, all of which I make myself from waste materials. Sometimes I work for a period exclusively on Grave Goods, an ongoing collection of items and garments which I intend to be buried with me. I’ll be showing some of these at ‘Borrowed Time’ in November, and they’ll be in the next Dark Mountain book this spring. I teach life drawing, practice various fibre and textile arts, make leather and buckskin, and find time for other natural material handcrafts using bark, wood, stones, bone and so on. I find sanity in grinding ochres for paint, making ink from botanicals and plying cordage from plant fibres. My work is found in magazines, books, periodicals, sometimes in shows in galleries or online, but most often within the pages of Dark Mountain. Much of my work is bought privately and now has a life on the walls and in the homes of people all over the world, who may have seen it on my website or on Instagram. It is good for my art to have its own life, beyond my little boat, and to be in relationship with other eyes and minds. 

Ink and paint materials

I forage rather than grow most of the plants I use, particularly oak galls, lime tree inner bark, prunus gum and leaves and nettles. In 2020 I was about to start an allotment of plants for inks, but arthritis has meant this isn’t possible just now. However, I was always a gatherer, and though I would love to again be a gardener, the riverbanks and seashores where I spend most of my time offer such a wealth of materials to the ethical forager, I would barely have time to tend the woad, madder or marigolds I had planned for the year ahead. Swaps with other colour people are common and a huge joy. I provide a yearly pigment for the Wild Pigment Project, which is a source of real community and learning for me. Right now two parcels of ochres are on their way to Tilke Elkins, and post gods willing, should be winging their way round the world in the late spring. 

Badger dug chalk

A constant in my life since childhood has been a procession of inspiring and talented teachers. Some teachers who have been really instructive for me since returning to England have been Joe O’Leary (@joescraft), Theresa Emmerich Kamper (@traditional_leather), Daniel Chatto, David Cranswick (@alchemyofpaint). Mostly I prefer to learn skills in person, and then practice on my own. Books come a close second. Videos come last, which is ironic, as that’s what I get asked most to create for my own students. So I am rather latterly teaching myself to make and edit instructional films, as Paul Kingsnorth and I will be teaching Wild Twins Course for the third time this year, but online rather than in the wilds of Cork, Ireland. We bring words and the image together, using myth and story, hand making all our materials, sending ourselves out into the wild to really listen to nature. It’s a distillation of all the work we both care about, and I am so looking forward to teaching it this April. All 18 places filled up and I feel really lucky to soon share what I love.

Back deck view

After being suddenly evicted from my purpose-built boat studio and mooring last September, I now work in the saloon of my new little boat upriver and store all my materials here and in my new shed. It may not be ideal, but it was warm and convenient over the winter, and I got on with lots of projects. 2021 sees teaching Wild Twins, an ink residency at @knockvologan.studies on Mull, creating site-specific art materials at The Sidney Nolan Trust with Wilderness Art Collective in the summer, and exhibiting Grave Goods and talking at Borrowed Time symposium at Dartington in November. In 2022 I will hopefully be working on a Dark Mountain book collaboration, which I can’t talk about yet!

Teaching paint making on the Wild Twins Course

My feeling is, after almost 50 years on this incomparable planet, among beloved human and non-human neighbours, that my art is a natural response to how things are for this particular organism, moment to moment. This means I will never be someone who bangs out a cohesive-looking body of similarly made work for 20 years and has a gallery to represent them. Instead I shall remain a tributarian, a meanderthal, a craftcrastinator, found in nooks and cracks like a dandelion or an ink cap, and be happier for it. For many years, my art came out in lyrics, melodies, harmonies and basslines. Now I take a line for a walk with a quill dipped in blackest ink. But looking back from where I am now, I can see the winding path through it all, and am still really interested to see where it will lead. So I will stay out here to make art where earth matters, sending tendrils out into the wider world with the brambles and rocks, as part of nature, and not in the airless hall of polished mirrors that is the mainstream (so-called) culture. 

Links to all my recent work, exhibitions, publications, essays and projects can be found at www.carolineross.co.uk . There are also regular posts from my process at Instagram @foundandground 

You can search for my name at www.wildernessart.org to see work from the recent show ‘Wilderness of the Mind’.

www.dark-mountain.net has two essays, including one about my ochre on rock artwork for the cover of issue 13. My art and writing are in 7 issues of the book from issue 9 onwards.

Sophie Twiss - Botanical Dreams

Featured Artist Series

This is part of a series of blogs featuring inspiring artists and craft people who work with local natural materials.

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I grew up in Durham, in the North of England and I live in a Santa Lucia, a small village in the South of Spain. This informs the way I work since working with the plants around me was a process of learning, familiarising and integrating myself with my surrounding environment. Getting to know the species that I share space with, observing patterns of growth and paying attention to what happens around me. In my arts practice I use materials that I encounter, exploring narratives of place through material and processes.

I enjoy the stories that reveal themselves when learning about plants. Morning glory is an introduced garden ornamental and invasive plant that has taken strangulating hold here; the beautiful glowing iridescent purple blue flowers smother the local plants. I have used it to make inks and dyes and have used the vines to weave. I use what is abundant and until now didn’t grow any dye plants, I would have to investigate the appropriateness of introducing any plants and have been happy so far to explore what already exists here.

One of my favourite colour sources is from acebuche, small wild olives which make purple, blue, pink and red. I probably started investigating dye plants because of this, seeing the deep colour stains under the acebuche trees, and in the bird droppings – I thought that if it still retains the purple colour after being processed through the body of a bird then it is an interesting colour! And it is a very sort of authentic expression of this place, the wild olive trees are ancient rooted. Oxalis flowers paint the countryside yellow in spring and make a deep sunshine yellow that I love. I am lucky to have an abundance of walnut, avocado and pomegranate trees too.

I have a special affinity with certain plants like Alexanders, they don’t make the strongest dye colour but I like it very much and I love to see them appear each year. I had no interest in working with insect dyes but prickly pear cactuses and cochineal are quite common in this area – both are considered invasive species and beginning to learn about them was like opening a book about history, colour trade and ecology which I found fascinating. When a neighbour gave me cochineal covered leaves from a dead cactus curiosity got the better of me and I was astounded by the deep colours that I extracted.

The dome was an idea I had when I first began to experiment with plant colours. I would create libraries of colour swatches. I liked to play, experiment, process and mostly just enjoyed to see the expanding colour palette. I would cover my walls in colour swatches and samples. I saw them as a sort of abstract map of the local environment, since I was only using what grew around me.

In seeing the collections of colours I wanted to create a space where they could be contemplated together as a whole, a landscape colour map. I had previously worked a lot with geometric shapes, I was interested in patterns of growth and the dome was a good resolution in bringing these ideas together. There was a long process of gathering and dyeing. I learned how to dye better mid way through and if I would start again now I would probably have much stronger colours but I like how it is also exists as testament to my learning process and experiments.

To make the dome was great experience, to start with an idea and see it fully realised (with a global pandemic in the middle) yet not quite knowing until it is completed how it will look and feel. It was first mounted by my home where it was created and felt harmonious. The colours distilled from the plants dialoguing with the same plants in the environment. To view it from outside and then to experience it inside, to see the sun and reflections of plants through the material was quite special. It is currently exhibited by the Barbate river that flows through this area. From there I would like to take it to different landscapes in this area, to inhabit the environment from which it was created.

I made a quilt with the scraps of material leftover from the dome which was a really positive personal experience. I had very little sewing skill or knowledge before I started but was able to make what would become a very precious object to me. It was a process of accepting imperfection; lots of the triangles don’t meet as they should, there are ruffles, pleats, wonky stitches but the overall whole is beautiful. That was a huge lesson or me. I want to sleep in the dome with the quilt when spring comes and it is dry and warmer. I call the work Botanical Dreams, this was what I had named it from the beginning, before I’d even thought to make a quilt so it is fitting that the quilt became part of the dream.

Handmade inks

I continue to experiment with different ways of working with plants. I have been experimenting with watercolours from plant pigments and made charcoal from willow which was really inspiring. I love the seasonal nature of working with plants and the constancy, if I miss something it will come around again. I am currently working on a couple of projects, about moth biodiversity and another about urban insectivorous birds. They are quite different but are actually both connected to plants – when looking at moths it is relevant to look at available plant food sources and the insectivorous birds migrate following the abundance of insects which come with Spring and the blossoming of plants – everything is connected and the network of relationships with plant life is fascinating and complex.

My work can be seen on my website: https://sophietwiss.com/

I keep a (not so constant) Instagram account at: _stwiss_

Lucy O'Hagan

This is part of a series of blogs featuring inspiring artists and craft people who work with local natural materials.

Exploring the mundane and the sacred through Ancestral crafting

Photo by Ana Filipa Piedade

The cave was tight. There was room for only one of us to go in at a time and myself and Nina, a petite French circus performer, had paired up to make the long, dark and cramped journey deep into the earth. The fat from the lamp burned along our willow herb seed wick and lit up the space around us. As we reached the end of the canal, my hand reached out, feeling around the walls ahead until the familiar slick feeling met my palms. Clay. I plunged my hand in and pulled out a fist-sized clump, then another, dreaming of the bowl ready to be birthed. Nina’s turn. She shimmied her body around mine, and we awkwardly swapped the fat lamp between us. She reached ahead, her hands just out of reach of the clay clad wall. I felt her body poise for a leap in the darkness to reach that extra inch, and in one swift movement, she leap. And the light went out. And we lay in the darkness, howling with laughter.

Experiences like this colour my creative practice. The story of travelling to source and the relationships that are formed therein, both with the human and the more-than-human world.

Photo by Lucy O’Hagan

This clay, dug from deep in the belly of the Vézère valley in France, close to the prehistoric settlements of Font de Gaume and Lascaux, was shaped into a bowl by my hands. The bowl was dried among wild foods and meats in the meadow beneath a warming May sun. It then met fire and wood and was transformed into something which would accompany me on trips for many years to come. Holding wild Chaga teas and sparkling Meadowsweet brews. Within that bowl, lies many memories; from earth to fire, to water and hands. In this way, the process of conversing with the land through the elements nourishes me, and continues to nourish me many times over. Creativity for me, is a conversation with the wild within and without and a building of inter-species community.

Upon arriving at a new place in County Meath, Ireland, 5 months ago, my body is immediately drawn to be outside and ‘meet the neighbours’. What relationships can I tend to in this place and what do they have to teach me? How can I come to fully embody this landscape by allowing myself to be shaped by it?

There is an abundance of Gabhrán / Clematis here. Their vines drip down the trees and provide the most amazing wood-scapes to immerse myself in. Meeting Gabhrán, I am invited into an entirely new relationship. Getting to know which vines bend at will, which will break and how, which will shed bark to reveal textured green beneath, and which will hold on tight to their papery skin. What is best for spoon, basket, fishing pot, fire-lighting… it is a slow burn, like any good relationship, trusting one another takes time and attention.

My explorations lie at an intersection between that which is practical in the here and now; a basket for gathering nettles, a tanned deer skin for clothing, cord for making fishing line, wood for making spoons; and a wondering of how my ancestors might have responded to these materials. When I crush a rock, or bend a vine, I wonder how ancient the embodiment of these actions are. Sometimes, I feel it in my bones; that deep familiarity. The first time I really felt this I was gathering moss in Northern Sweden to thatch a shelter. My ancestors of bog and moss were with me, showing me exactly where to get the thickest, moistest clumps. Something of my own essence lives in bog, in exploring the depths I come to know myself as bog-like.

Not only does the relationship with the land lie in the material, but also in the interaction with all that surrounds us. As I sit and silently weave beneath the spruce, I hear the herons call above me, and I come to know their family more, their many different voices and movements. As I twine to myself with nettles, I catch a glimpse of deer and I feel the perception of separation between us slip away. I feel myself become embedded in the land as I co-create with them, the edges between us begin to blur and I begin to wonder if I am weaving the basket or if the basket is weaving me. In this way, the mundane becomes sacred.

Apprenticing myself to wild materials and beings and to my own creativity is a difficult thing to do at times. I feel the moments of frustration, my inner critic having their way with me, and the capitalist drive to succeed, produce and repeat can wreak havoc at times. For me, this is when ceremony becomes so important in my interactions with the land. It reminds me that the relationship is based on reciprocity, and that in relating with place, we can ceremoniously co-create with the land, rooting ourselves to place. This can be as simple as saying thank you or, in some cases, of gifting these creations back to the land, renewing our relationship as I let go of the need to be externally validated for my artistic expression. These are the silent, intimate moments so seldom seen and so tenderly appreciated.

Through these creatively curious pilgrimages in the wild, I actively and playfully belong myself to the land; creating conversations between my inner and outer landscapes. Nature acts as mirror and creations from this act as offerings. Through this creative process emerges the gifts of remembering, rewilding, reclaiming and re-storying.

Lucy O’Hagan (She/They) is the founder and director of Wild Awake. She teaches classes and guides multi-day immersions, aiming to rekindle cultural and ecological resilience through the (re)learning of ancestral skills and life ways in Ireland. You can find more about Lucy through their website wildawake.ie and instagram @wildawakeireland.

Photo of clay pots was taken by Tomas Schaefer

Carolyn Sweeney / Strata Ink

Featured Artist Series

This is part of a series of blogs featuring inspiring artists and craft people who work with local natural materials.

My artistic practice is driven by curiosity and exploration. I have an abiding passion for plants, particularly the plants native to my home in the Pacific Northwest. When I discovered I could make ink from many of the plants I was already familiar with it kindled a childlike enthusiasm. My work typically depicts plants I have sketched in the field and then reworked in the studio with my own homemade natural inks. This is a true investigation of place from rocks to soils to leaves. These paintings are a testament to the abundance of beauty all around us. I believe the simplest elements in life can sometimes be the most rewarding- a bright red ochre, the deep brown juice of a discarded walnut husk, sunlight falling on a leaf.

Harvesting Chamisa for Lake Pigments

Gathering Red Ochre from an Orgeon Road Cut

I live in Portland, Oregon and I prefer to forage for my materials. Living in the city I have limited access to land. The yard that I do have is too shaded to grow most dye plants. In wild areas of the city I find an abundance of plants suitable for ink making. I keep a mental map of the useful plants in my neighborhood. As the seasons change I alter my daily walking routes to visit the plants I want to harvest in any given season. I also look out for neighbors who are growing dye plants, like coreopsis, as ornamentals. One neighbor with a particularly robust coreopsis patch in her front yard has given me permission to deadhead her plants. I take the dried up flowers and she is happy to have someone clean up her plants throughout the summer. This summer I gathered tansy flowers and goldenrod from an urban natural area and used them to make lake pigments. There are lots of black walnut and chestnut trees in my neighborhood so I gather the husks of those in the fall. Prunings from neighborhood fruit trees make for good winter inks. Right now I have an abundance of pruned bay laurel branches. When I keep my eyes open I find more plant matter for ink making than I could ever use. One neighbor’s waste is another neighbor’s treasure!

This year I am focusing on creating a line of artist quality, lightfast, all natural inks in a full range of colors. Most of the pigments are made from rocks, soils, and plants I have foraged myself. I have been making my own inks and watercolor paints from foraged natural materials for many years now, but making a full range of colors is a new and inspiring challenge. Each ink is made from pigment and homemade watercolor binder which I mull on a glass slab. When I paint with the inks it is a completely different experience from using commercial paints. These natural colors make sense to me. They have become an integral part of my work. Gathering and processing my own pigments is very time consuming, but I enjoy making the inks as much as I enjoy painting with them. When I sit down to paint with the inks I feel I am having a conversation with friends. The inks have come from places that are intimate to me and I carry that intimacy and fellowship into my painting practice.

In the past I struggled to depict the natural world with the bright watercolors I bought off the shelf. Once I began using natural pigments the subtlety and nuance I was looking for was right in front of me- layers of color in one ink, color that that changes as it dries, color that breaks and bleeds. I want to share this experience with others. Painting with natural inks is a form of color therapy for me. I feel intense joy simply painting a row of swatches and watching the colors unfold. All of the colors blend beautifully. There are no wrong notes, just new cords to play. Using these inks has built my confidence in my own work and given me abundant fuel for experimentation. I believe that I am just at the beginning of my explorations. The more time I spend with the inks and colors the more fluent I feel in using them.

I have been quite isolated from people this winter due to Covid restrictions and a partner who is out of the country caring for an elderly parent. Working with plants and ochres has been a deep comfort to me. Foraging for them and processing them into ink has woven me more firmly into a network of connections outside of human relationships. That grounding in place and season is an antidote to loneliness. There is so much wonder and connection just outside my doorstep that even in the city I feel embraced by my place within the natural world.

My website is strataink.com where you can find my collection of natural inks. The best place to follow my ink making process and artistic practice is on instagram @strataink. I am also on Pinterest @Strata_Ink. I look forward to connecting with you there.

Carolyn Sweeney

Strata Ink

www.strataink.com

carolyn@strataink.com

Alice Fox

This is part of a series of blogs featuring inspiring artists and craft people who work with local natural materials.

©Carolynmendelsohn

Please tell us about your creative practice? My practice is based around using materials gathered and grown, mainly at my allotment plot. I trained in textiles after a short career in nature conservation. My work is underpinned by a strong passion for the natural world and a desire to work sustainably. I completed an MA in Creative Practice a couple of years ago and this helped me to really focus on the materials available to me on the allotment. I use plant fibres for making cordage (I’m exploring various soft basketry techniques at the moment) as well as processing and spinning flax and nettle for yarn. This is highly labour intensive for small amounts of usable thread, but the process is as important to me as any ‘finshed’ outcome. That engagement with the plot and everything that goes into nurturing, harvesting and then handling and coaxing fibres from the plants is completely immersive and imbues the resulting threads (and what I make with them) with so much more meaning than a commercially produced yarn. I use the plants that I grow for colour, for dyeing and for ink making, as well as botanical contact printing. I like to draw things from the plot using the inks made from allotment plants. Exploring the potential of everything on the plot constantly leads me in new directions.

How do you integrate natural materials in your practice? Natural materials are the basis of my work, but I also incorporate found objects in my work and will often experiment in bringing different materials together. There are a lot of plastics, paper, metal, ceramics and wood on the plot. I will make use of these when I can, even if it is just drawing them with the botanical inks.

Allotment shed & makeshift studio

Why do you choose to work with natural materials? I aim for my work to have as little impact on the environment as possible. Embracing natural cycles, working seasonally and using materials in a sustainable way are the key to my engagement with the plot and to my creative practice. I find natural materials beautiful and tactile – there is a kind of magic in taking something from the ground at the right time, processing it with care and coaxing it into a beautiful surface or structure. In some ways this is even more transformative if the fibre is classed as a weed or something unconventional as an art material.

Alice’s allotment

Where do you live and how does this influence your process of working with plants? I live in West Yorkshire, on the edge of Saltaire, which is part of Bradford. By using plants from my allotment (grown and self-seeded) I am using plants that are happy in the climate and conditions in my locality.

I understand much of your work is inspired by your allotment. Please tell me about your allotment? I grow a small amount of flax each year, to process into linen thread. I gather nettles on the plot, which are also processed for spinning. These are not sown but I encourage them to grow in certain parts of the plot. I gather brambles for fibre, bindweed stems and dandelion stalks from the margins of the plot and the wild bits in between allotments on the site. I use parts of plants that are grown primarily for food but that have fibrous leaves or stems, such as sweetcorn (husks), garlic (leaf) and other stems and strappy leaves as and when they are available. I grow various flowers as companion plants, but that can also be used as sources of colour – calendula, tagetes, coreopsis, sunflowers. I grew woad and weld for the first time last year, but I’ve generally resisted planting things specifically as dye plants, preferring to explore the potential of a normal working veg plot. I use wood from the various trees on the plot for ink making – apple, pear, beech and peach.

Dandelion braid with stone - Alice Fox

What processes are you drawn to and why? I am most comfortable with thread-based processes, resulting in constructed surfaces and structures. This might involve weaving, stitching, looping, twining, braiding… There are lots of steps involved before some of the fibres I work with become useable threads and each fibre requires slightly different handling or processing.

Freshly gathered bramble fibre - Alice Fox

What are the challenges to working with natural materials? Materials are only available at certain times of the year and the cycles of harvesting, drying, processing etc. take time. If you miss a window of opportunity you have to wait another year. Crops of each fibre are not necessarily abundant, but this makes them more ‘valuable’ as a result. It is easy to lose a year’s crop of something if stored badly – things can very quickly go mouldy if damp. Usable fibre has a long lead-in time but some of the colour-based activity can be much more immediate, enabling different ways of recording and mapping through drawing and printing.

What are you working on in 2021? I am developing a body of work that brings a series of found objects from the plot together with plant fibres. I am also working on a new book this year, which explores lots of the themes of my work.

How can people access your work?

My website features various exhibition projects I’ve undertaken, as well as listing workshops and exhibitions. I have published a number of books, which are available to order via my website. Plot 105, which I published last year, is all about the ways I use my allotment plot in my practice.

Website: www.alicefox.co.uk

Instagram and Twitter: @alicefoxartist

Facebook: www.facebook.com/alicefoxartist

Five Ways To Work With Woad

Woad coming in to flower

Woad (istasis tinctoria) is a biannual brassica. The leaves contain the precursors for indigo. In the summer of the first year, the leaves contain the most potential for indigo. In the early spring of the second year, the plants go to flower, these flowers transform to seeds that can be harvested in the summer of the second year.

Extracting indigo from woad

First year woad in summer

• To obtain the indigo pigment, you can harvest the fresh leaves and extract the indigo through a process of soaking, oxidising, flocculating, and then rinsing the pigment. This pigment can be used to make an indigo dye vat for textiles and paper, or used to make indigo ink and paint. 

• You can create a pink dye from the left over woad leaves after using them to extract indigo pigment. Simply steep the used leaves in hot water. Remove the leaves the next day and add your fabric. Simmer for an hour and then soak over night for a soft pink colour.

• Leaf pounding technique. The leaves are fantastic for leaf pounding. Lay the leaves on your fabric and then fold the fabric back over the leaves. Use a hammer to pound the leaves in to the fabric for a vibrant turquoise colour. 

• Salt extraction. A quick way to dye fibres with woad is to use salt. Harvest the first year woad leaves in the summer. Add a spoonful of salt and macerate the leaves. The salt will draw out the moisture and the indigo from the leaves creating a green liquid. Soak your fabrics in this liquid over night for a beautiful soft blue colour. 

• Woad seed lake pigment. You can create a lake pigment from ripe woad seeds using soda ash and alum. This can be used to make a blue paint. I cover this technique in the course in Botanical Ink & Paint Making I run.

There are so many different ways to work with woad! What is your favourite process with woad?

Making lake pigments. The blue pigment is from woad seed.

Drawing with indigo pigment

Extracted indigo

Drawing with woad seed pigment and coreopsis ink

Five Flowers For Inks & Dyes

Here are five of my favourite dye and ink plants. These are all plants you can easily grow in the UK. I find that all flowers will give some pigment, but not all plants will give vibrant distinctive colours.

Buddleia flowers

Buddleia - This is a perennial woody shrub/tree that grows commonly in urban industrial edges and gardens. The flowers start to bloom in June and continue throughout the Summer. The flowers are very abundant making it possible to gather large quantities without depleting the supply for the butterflies and bees who also love them. All the flowers, regardless whether they are pink, white, or yellow give a bright yellow dye. This is effective with an aluminium based mordant on silk and wool. You can also do bundle dyeing with the flowers as the flowers release their pigment quickly.

Gertrude Jekyll Rose

Roses - All plants in the rose family are high in tannin. This means that they will react with iron to give black. Roses also give pinks, yellows, and greens. I use roses for bundle dyeing to create soft pink and black patterns. I have also got interesting yellow effects when using cotton mordanted with aluminium acetate. Rose petals work well in the lake pigment process, giving a large quantity of green pigment that is reactive with mild acids, metals.

Coreopsis flowers

Dyer’s Coreopsis (coreopsis tinctoria) - This tender annual plant has yellow and red flowers that give a vibrant orange dye, ink, and paint. I grow these flowers from seed each year. The plants are prolific, giving new flowers every day. The petals give off colour very readily meaning you only need one or two plants to have enough to give an effect.

Tagetes Marigold flowers

Marigold (Tagetes spp) - These flowers are commonly grown all around the world for their bright colours. They are called ‘insectories” as they attract insects to them, making them a useful addition to an organic garden. The flowers give a beautiful mustard yellow colour on textiles, and a green or yellow ink. I sow the seed in April, pot on in May, and then plant out the young plants in my garden in June. The more you harvest the flowers, the more flowers come.

Dahlia flowers

Dahlia Flowers - Dahlias are tender perennials that can survive outside all year round in milder climates. I keep my dahlias in the ground all year round, ensuring they are well mulched and the tubers are low enough beneath the soil to protect them from the frost. You can get dahlias in many different colours, and the different flowers give many different colours when dyeing and ink making. Not always the colour you expect. The colours are also sensitive to pH, meaning that the same flower can give different colours depending on the pH of the water. I love dark purple dahlias as these can give greens. Oranges are commonly produced from many dahlia flowers.

If you would like to learn more, check out the online courses I offer.

Coreopsis dyed fabric and fabric bundle dyed with marigolds and iron

Colours from dahlia flowers on silk

Rose, buddleia, and iron on silk

Marigold dye pot

Coreopsis ink

Nature Connection Through Wild Dyes

My practice with natural dyes and inks is a process of learning how to live in a more close and practical relationship with the natural world. Working with seasons, wild plants, and chemical free processes to create a culture around colour that is directly from and closely connected with the land where we live. Through roughly 13000 years of agriculture, we have become increasingly separated from nature. The synthetic dye industry, developed in the 1800s is one of the most polluting industries on the planet. Globally, the textile industry discharges 40,000 – 50,000 tons of dye into water systems every year. This cocktail of polluted water and chemicals, causes the death of aquatic life, contaminating soils and poisoning of drinking water. It is also now clear that we are living in a time of human caused mass extinction and climate chaos. We need to find a new ways of living that are more connected with the natural world.  

I am hugely influenced by a short time I spent in with the Ju’hoansi (The San Bushmen) in the Kalahari desert in 2018. These people hold a story of a rich way of life that is in harmony with the natural world, with old ancestral relationships with all animals, fungi, and plants who live around them such as the baobab, lions, the honeyguide bird, acacia trees, the springhare, lions etc. These relationships are built up through direct practical relationships, multiple generations of interactions and experiences passed on through stories. 

When learning about the natural world, we love to to label things. But to learn the name of a plant can often be the end of our curiosity. When we learn not just the names, but we get to know a plant in it’s character through all seasons and stages of it’s life cycle, and we start to interact. A deeper relationship develops and the name becomes almost irrelevant. We then start to integrate these useful plants and what we can make from them in to our lives. As we walk the land, we visit places where these plants grow and harvest, everywhere we go becomes imbibed with story. We create annual pilgrimages to visit the wild weld, the flowering mugwort, and the tansy. The becomes full of the stories of our own discoveries. Each one a small initiation in to the arms of the earth. Learning to live in relationship with the land. With this comes reverence and respect for the beings who live here.  

Many wild dye plants are untapped abundance, If you don’t harvest them, no-one else will.  Oak galls (a brown and black) fallen beneath a tree the can be harvested to make a brown or black ink. There used to be a forgotten alleyway in Bristol planted with pink roses where I would harvest the petals all summer. Look out for over-grown camellia bushes (red and yellow), or abandoned fruit trees (pink yellow and orange), the pruning of these are fantastic sources of dyes and inks. Look out for over grown stag horn sumac (grey and black). This is an invasive tree that takes over gardens, all parts of this tree are useful for dyeing as they are high in tannins. 

On the wild edges to the industrial estate where the buddleia flowers bloom (yellow) in the summer become a place to harvest and appreciate the butterflies. We create these cycles for ourselves on the land. The places where we return to, layering up memories. The walnut trees in the car park (brown and black), the abandoned eucalyptus plantation (pink and orange), The weld patch by the sea. These are all places near where I live where I harvest every year. Pieces of my local map I have created in my mind. The land becomes re-named in detail based on my discoveries. No need to write it down, the experiences you have discovering the magic of discovery mean that you will never forget these places. 

Through working with local wild plants, we develop a local colour palette. Responding to what is here. You can go out looking for something in particular but, unless you have already scouted out your foraging spots. you will get frustrated and come back empty handed most of the time. So it is important to be open to the unknown and respond to what you encounter. Being with, not doing to.

I am talking through the lens of working with wild dye plants, however, this approach is all about generalisation not specialisation. This practice is also applicable to wild food, medicine, and crafts, learning about birdsong, tracking, natural navigation, learning what wood is best for starting fires and what wood is best for cooking on. In the modern world, we are encouraged to be specialists. To choose one area of study and focus on and becoming an authority at that so that we can monetise our skill. When in the natural world, it is more rewarding to be a generalist because you are then able to give attention to all that you encounter rather than filtering out what can feel irrelevant. Being able to meet fully whatever you encounter. We all have our own subconscious filters of what we notice. When I go out, I am (slightly obsessively) attuned to noticing wild mushrooms. When I go out with others, I am amazed when they point out other things that I had not noticed such as bird calls, animal tracks or signs. There so much information around us, as we tune in, we start to be able to read the stories of the land, to notice the plucking post of a goshawk, what they had for dinner, and when. We can start to know where specific species of mushrooms are likely to pop up each year. We start to know where to look on unknown pieces of land for particular plants based on the topography. Responding to clues such as the dampness of the land, the altitude or proximity to the sea. We start to create our new migratory foraging routes, following the flow of abundance throughout the year. For me, the starts with the first warm sunny day imbolc with the harvesting of tree sap, and ending with icy velvet shanks in the midst of winter. 

Before synthetic dyes were invented in the 1800s, all dyes and pigments had natural sources. They were extracted from plants, rocks, earth minerals, or insects. Cultural identifies were defined by the colours that could be created from locally available materials. This gave colours symbolism and meaning connected to how the colour was made and who used it. 

Everyone would have worn the colours of the land. We would have had enduring relationships with these garments due to the energy and resources requited to create the fibres and the colours. Fabrics would have been cared for, repaired, and reused. 

Sharing the practice of creating colour from plants is about empowerment and self care through developing/deepening our relationship with nature. As we learn how to sustain ourselves with wild natural materials, we become part of the natural world again. 

Permaculture and Nature Connection

I have been fascinated by permaculture ever since I first heard about in in 2010. I was studying design at art school at that time, and I was frustrated. I felt that there was something missing in the design methodology that we were being taught. During the summer holidays, I stumbled across an Introduction to Permaculture session at a festival, and I was so excited to learn about a design methodology that incorporated the whole natural world, and not just humans. I was keen to learn more, so the next summer, I did a two week ‘Earth Activist Training’, exploring activism, spirituality, and permaculture, run by Starhawk and Andy Goldring. This experience blew my mind and permanently shifted something in my relationship with the natural world. In that short two weeks, we tasted something so rich and connected with nature. I had never experienced this before. I went back to my final year of art school quite bemused, I had had my world blown open, but I took me a long time to fully internalise the learnings and develop a new creative practice.

After graduating, I spent a year of trying to fit myself in to the design industry and feeling disconnected behind computers and post-it notes. I finally accepted that this wasn’t the right world for me and I went off to do an apprenticeship in horticulture and stick my hands in the soil. Through this time growing vegetables and learning about ecological growing techniques, I came to recognise that permaculture holds many pragmatic solutions to the complex problems we face in the climate and ecological crisis we live in. However, something still didn’t feel right. Despite having put myself physically closer to nature, there was something missing. I was seeking to connect with nature and yet, growing vegetables and herbs still felt like trying to control nature. I was not fully satisfied.

This has led me on to spend the past five years studying wild plants and developing my own nature connection practices around foraging for plant dyes, wild food, and medicine. Getting to know all the wild plants, trees, and fungi that live around us and how I can have a practical relationship with them. I have been inspired by learning from and about the most stable and sustainable cultures on the planet; egalitarian hunter gatherers. Partictularly the Ju’hoansi (the Bushmen) of the Kalahari. Learning about these peaceful people who live in the desert has given me hope that as humans, it is possible for live in balance and harmony with nature and also have a high quality of life. I do not seek to romanticise the past and I am not suggesting that we go back in time. I just seek to weave these learnings and practices in to my life in the modern world. To have a richer and more connected life being fully present in the natural world. Living in the UK, our indigenous lineage has been broken with the witch hunts, the clearances, and colonisation. So I have been on a journey of going back to learn from the land, as well as learning from wise people who are already doing this work. Such as The Seed Sisters, Rhizone Community Herbal, The Old Way, Fred Gillam, and Bruce Parry. I made friends with fellow foragers and we now gather in wild places throughout the seasons to share our learnings about plants and fungi together.

I am still gardening as well as foraging for seaweed, mushrooms, and plants. Deepening in to a seasonal life, living in the flow of the sun and the moon, while also being part of the modern world.

Permaculture and Natural Dyes

Permaculture stands for “permanent culture”, integrating human and ecological needs in to the design process. It is a series of design ethics and principles that you can apply to any design process or system. Developed by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in Australia in the 1070s inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka's natural farming philosophy, written in his book ‘One Straw Revolution’.

Although Permaculture is usually associated with small holdings and hippies, I find the principles are useful guidelines for developing ideas, designing things, and systems of working. Both in relationship with the natural world, socially, and economically. I have applied this to my work making plant based inks and dyes, all the way through from gardening to studio practices.

Twelve permaculture design principles

Articulated by David Holmgren in his Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability:

I have added bullet points of reflections of how I like to apply the principles .

1. Observe and interact: By taking time to engage with nature we can design solutions that suit our particular situation.

   • Take time to get to know the plants that are growing around you, and fibres that are locally available.

2. Catch and store energy: By developing systems that collect resources at peak abundance, we can use them in times of need.

   • Reuse old dye baths to create print pastes and inks.

   • Collecting food waste to use for ink making.

   • Follow the energy of the plants. Harvest plants at their most vibrant time. Flowers in the summer, roots in the autumn etc.

   • We are not aiming for busyness. We are aiming for focussed efficiency of systems that keep your life free to be able to be present in the moment.

3. Obtain a yield: Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the work that you are doing.

   • When starting out, use simple dye recipes that have few steps so you get quick results. Particularly when working with new plants.

   • Work with plants that are easy to harvest in abundance without too much work. Such as buddleia, oak galls, sumac, willow bark.

4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback: We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well.

   • Try out a few different processes with small quantities of plant material and fibres. Notice what works and what doesn’t work. Build on your successes.

   • Start small so that you feel able to respond to feedback. Being overly invested too soon can make it difficult to hear feedback that may make investments or hard work obsolete.

   • Become comfortable with the unknown. This is space for something new to come through.

5. Use and value renewable resources and services: Make the best use of nature's abundance to reduce our consumptive behaviour and dependence on non-renewable resources.

   • Choose plants that are renewable. Food waste, flower waste, and abundant wild plants are ideal if it is energy efficient to harvest them. Harvesting bark from pruned branches, sourced from orchards or tree surgeons is a good.

   • Coppicing trees for a renewable yield without harming the tree.

   • Some souses of dye plants are not sustainable. Such as dye plants that come from hardwood trees resulting in forest clearance.

   • Make sure you know where all your materials come from.

   • Consider where your energy for water heating is coming from. Consider how you can reduce the energy you use.

   • Consider where your water comes from. How can you minimise your water use.

6. Produce no waste: By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available to us, nothing goes to waste.

   • Reusing dye baths for paler colours

   • Turning dye baths in to inks and print pastes.

   • Using food waste from cafes such as avocado skins and flower waste from florists.

   • Harvest tree bark from fruit tree pruning.

   • Avoid creating contaminated water waste through careful consideration of dye processes and ingredients. Design from patterns to details: By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.

7. Integrate rather than segregate: By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop between those things and they work together to support each other.

   • Connecting people together through craft. Making together, making connections. Working together in gardens and more labour intensive processes such as indigo extraction and large harvests.

   • Practice zoning. What activities require your attention every day? Position these at home. What activities only need weekly, monthly, or annual attention? These can be positioned further away. For example, in peak season coreopsis flowers need to be harvested every day, so I plant these right outside my front door. Madder is only harvested in large batches once or twice a year so I grow this in a garden further from home.

   • Growing at different levels. Madder is a low sprawling plant, so often I grow sunflowers in the madder bed in order to save on space.

8. Design from patterns to details: By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.

   • Working with seasonal flow. What is this season asking of me in this moment? Where is the energy in the plants during this season?

9. Use small and slow solutions: Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, making better use of local resources and producing more sustainable outcomes.

   • Small scale, human size production.

   • Build your processes slowly, testing new recipes with small amounts of fabric.

10. Use and value diversity: Diversity reduces vulnerability to a variety of threats and takes advantage of the unique nature of the environment in which it resides.

    • Aim to work with a variety of plants that are locally available throughout the seasons. I like to work with herbs such as rosemary, sage, and bay because they are reliably available all year round. There are challenges to seeking a non-toxic practice, and also seeking to create a wide spectrum of vibrant colours. This often leaves me reliant on particular plants that I can not grow, such as symplocos and indigo. This can be restricting if there is a limit to supply.

11. Use edges and value the marginal: The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.

    • Connecting people who come from different practices in natural dyeing, from growers, to weavers, and knitters. Working with plant dyes integrates many different processes.

    • When looking for dye plants, look for the ecological edges. The edges, the field edges, the waysides, the fences along industrial areas, and river sides.

    • Look for creative edge. This is where the opportunities are. Where plants, materials, and processes come together in unexpected ways. Look at where plant dyeing meets ink making. Or where plant dyeing meets weaving, or herbal medicine.

12. Creatively use and respond to change: We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing, and then intervening at the right time.

    • Working with the seasons of the year.

    • Working with the seasons in our life.

If you are interested to explore this further, I run various courses in working with natural dyes and inks. Some online, and some from my studio in South Devon in the UK.

Propagating Dye Plants

Some dye plants such as rose petals, sage, and rosemary may already be growing in your garden or easily found locally. Other dye plants, such as madder, weld, or woad will only be found in the garden of a natural dyer, so the seeds and plants can be harder to find to start your garden.

I get my seeds and cuttings from a variety of different sources. Some of the best ones are:

Wild Garden Seed Company

For: Dyer’s Coreopsis, Dahlias, Dyer’s Chamomile, Hollyhock, Shades of Gold Marigolds, Hopi Black Sunflowers, Weld.

Grand Prismatic Seeds

For: Dyer’s Coreopsis, Dyer’s Chamomile, Hollyhock, Shades of Gold Marigolds, Hopi Black Sunflowers, Weld, madder, japanese indigo,

Wild Colours

For: Madder seeds (Rubia tinctoria), Dyers Chamomile seeds (Anthemis tinctoria), Dyers Coreopsis seeds (Coreopsis tinctoria), Japanese Indigo seeds (Persicaria tinctoria), Weld seeds (Reseda luteola), Woad seeds (Istasis Tinctora)

Propagation

I start most plants from seeds. One reason is because this is the cheapest way to get a good quantity of plants. I have also found that most dye plants are only commercially available in seed form because they are unusual.

In the spring, I sow the seeds of the annual plants that I like to dye with and any new biannual or perennial plants I would like to establish in the garden. Some plants such as woad, hollyhock, and weld will self seed across the garden, so I don’t always need to sow these seeds. However other plants such as marigold (tagetes), coreopsis, and japanese indigo (persicaria tinctoria) need to be sown every year.

l sow the seeds in module trays in March in the polytunnel. Alternatively, you can keep them on a sunny windowsill or in a greenhouse. I will pot the plants on in to larger pots after about a month, when the plants are handleable. This allows them to grow to a decent size before planting them out in the garden. I like to have planted everything out in the garden by mid-summer. Often, I find that plants that I don’t manage to plant until after mid summer will be leggy.

Some plants can be split by root or rhizome, such as madder (rubia tinctoria) and dahlias. These are best to split in the winter while the plants are dormant.

Some plants, such as sage and dyer’s chamomile will grow easily from a cutting. With these, I take a stem cutting that has plenty of root nodules in the spring and plant this directly in the ground. This works because I live in a damp place. If you live in a dry place, Leave your cuttings for a few weeks on the window sill in a jar of water to encourage the root growth before planting.

I love creating dye gardens. I have created four different dye gardens over the years. This spring, I will be creating a new dye garden near my studio in Devon. You are welcome to come and help me. On the 25th March, I am running a day for connecting with dye plants. Half the day will be for getting to know the wild dye plants that grow around us and the second half of the day will be looking at dye garden plants. We will sow some seeds and start to consider permaculture design principles we can apply to our dye gardens and dyeing processes. You can find out more about this day here.

Buddleia - A Yellow Dye

As the days grow longer and the plants mature, the butterflies are fluttering around. the flowers start to come out. Flowers are really fun to work with as they can give many colours, and not always the colour you expect. Buddleia is a great example of this as all the flowers, regardess of the colour of the petals, all give a yellow dye. This is one of our best wild sources of yellow in the UK. As the buddleia is so abundant on wasteland and industrial edges, no-one minds you picking the flowers, and there are always so many that there are plenty to share wth the butterflies and bees. As you pick the flowers, a bright yellow colour starts to spread across your hands. This dye is fantastic to bundle dye with because the colour releases quickly from the flowers. You can also make a stong yellow dye quite quickly with just a few flowers. Sometimes when running workshops in London, I will pick the flowers at the train station on the way to the workshop venue.

You can dry the flowers to store the colour for using throughout the year. I find that it is important to dry the flowers quickly so that they don’t lose their colour. It they turn grown when drying, the colour won’t be as potent.

Harvest moon

Being present to receive the gifts of the land.
We live in circles.
Finding the old circles.
Woods, river, sea, river, woods.
By the call of the cuckoo, and then the blackberry.
The drum beats and seasons pass.
Leaves fall as harvest rise.

I Am Falling

I am falling. A giant leaf on the damp ground. Breaking down. Decaying. Pieces of me are breaking off and becoming parts of other beings. The light is going. There is the sweet smell of decay in my nostrils singing a lullaby. There is a bare openness above. The softness of summer departs revealing the white hard, unforgiving bones. We are all falling together. Falling in to the ground to be mulched and transformed. There is a magical place in the dark woods where we have fallen. A place of alchemy and transformation.

Red Blood Dreaming

Red blood dreaming.
Sinking in holes.
Sand splatter.
Sea scatter.
Roar in the heart.
Tide rise over me.
Tarp flap flutter pull me in jangled circles.
Delve deep.
Head sleep.
Heart weep.
Sand creeping in to all crevices.
Marram grass pierce sharp in the sole of my foot.
Pull out the thread and walk the wound deep.
Heart beat throbbing through the roar of the deep.
Caught in the wave of the wind baggage scattered in a heap.
Foam crash down shallow pools.
Flickered sunlight splashing on worn skin.
Surrender.
Drawing in and pulling out to sealet swell. Stillness in movement carried down through tidal currents.
Softly sand grazed bottom.
Open roar inviting all to worship.
Expansive blown open eyes squinting through bright salt air.
Crusted eyebrows.
Granules crunched between teeth.
All is blown away.
Bleached white bone wood and crab carcass crunched underfoot.
Powdered thoughts swept up.
Granulated minds expanded.
Listening to the waves whisper stories of waves whispering stories to deep sea creatures moving slowly through dark heavy waters.
Flowing through movement to stillness through stillness to movement.
Smooth caring life under tarp.
Thin membrane. Dark nest of safety in a luminous expanse of glowing sky and sand. A sanctuary.

On The Land

I have found myself walking alone. Out on the land.

Here to witness the unfolding and gather some of it in.

Others pass by on their way. I’m just here to be.

At home in this place under this tree. Held by the gifts of this land.

Abundance carries me fat. Content. Excited. I grasp hungrily.

This meets my deep yearning for home. For connection.

Finding my centre of the universe.

Where I can rest my bones and breathe out slowly.

Laver

There is a mighty seaweed called laver bread

A slimy substance I used to dread

Rinse out the sand and boil for eight hours

We eat this gloop for magical powers