Design and hand-dye your own organic silk scarf using natural dyes that echo many of the organic materials found in An Indigenous Present. Inspired by Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill’s use of blackberry ink and spider cocoon in works such as Curtains and Site Parasite Dice Paradise as well as Audie Murray’s use of bear grease and sunlight on cotton in Remnants of Transference, instructor Jan Quarles will guide participants in creating abstract prints on silk. We will choose our own color approaches from a “buffet” of natural dyestuffs before steaming to set the colors. As the scarves set and dry, a docent will lead a tour of related works featured in An Indigenous Present. Each participant will leave with a signature bundle-dyed silk scarf.
About the Instructor
Jan Quarles is a long-time fiber artist who works with the beauty of the natural world. For more than 30 years, she’s been a dyer, weaver, knitter, seamstress, and spinner. Today, with her small business What Nature Leaves, she is a botanical printer, natural dyer, and practitioner of shibori and katazome. She deeply loves the magic of indigo.
Quarles had a solo show of her indigo and botanical prints in Nashville and is currently showing work in Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts’s summer gallery shows. She has studied with many teachers at Arrowmont, Penland School of Craft, and other craft venues nationally and internationally. She is a former journalist and professor of mass communication in the United States and overseas who has always practiced her fiber arts in the hours that were her own.
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