Thank you to all who stopped by during LAEL’s natural pigment demo on December 6th! This event took place in the lobby of Hopkins Hall during the undergraduate art open house and featured an array of plant-based inks for visitors to explore.
Inks were made from grocery store items (such as red cabbage, turmeric, butterfly pea, and cinnamon) as well as foraged materials (including pokeweed, European buckthorn, oak gall, and red oak acorn).
All of the foraged plants featured at this event are locally abundant in our region. They were collected in small quantities following the guiding principles of the Honorable Harvest, an Indigenous framework for considering ethics and reciprocity when taking from the natural world. Interested in learning more about what this means? Check out this article on the Honorable Harvest by Potawatomi botanist Dr. Robin Wall Kimmer, or stop by and chat with us at our next event! Foraging ethics will remain a central topic for discussion in the lab’s future foraged pigment activities.
We look forward to continuing to explore natural pigments in their many forms with the campus community.