natural pigments

April Workshops: Plant Dye Bandanas with Time for Change

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April 2nd and April 3rd: Plant Dye Bandanas with Time for Change Week

 

Time for Change Week is an OSU Signature Event with the purpose of raising awareness for topics relating to sustainability on campus. The Living Art and Ecology Lab hosted two bandana dyeing workshops as part of this year’s festivities. During this event, students used resist techniques to dye bandanas with two historically significant dye plants: indigo and madder root. Enjoy some photos of the student work below!

Bandana reveals from the indigo vat

Madder root dye bath and a madder bandana over-dyed with indigo

Two madder bandanas: one treated with alum and acorn-based tannin solution; another with alum alone

 

Thank you to Time for Change organizers for including the LAE LAB in this years events!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time for Change Week 2024: DIY Bandanas with Plant Dyes

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DIY Bandanas with Plant Dyes Hosted by The Living Art and Ecology Lab April 2nd, 2024 2:00pm-4:00pm April 3rd, 2024 2:00pm-4:00pm Hopkins Hall Room 480 To register, please visit https://tinyurl.com/33ex53ct Time for Change Event

Learn more about the world of plant-based color through this hands-on workshop! Join us in Hopkins Hall Room 480 on Tuesday, April 2nd or Wednesday, April 3rd from 2:00-4:00pm. Come dye your own bandanas using plant-based dyes such as indigo and madder root, creating unique patterns via resist dyeing techniques. Throughout the crafting process we will also discuss the rich history of natural dyes and how humans have been working with plant colors for millennia. Open to OSU students only. Registration required. To sign up, click here.

This event is part of Time for Change Week 2024, an OSU Signature Event Series. For more information on the rest of this week’s events, please visit the official T4C website.

Note: Participants are encouraged to wear clothes and shoes that they are ok with getting dirty as dyes can stain clothes.

Past Event: Natural Pigments Demonstration at the Undergraduate Art Open House

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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).

A display of various pigments, as well as tools for making them into paints and inks
Visitors exploring painting with natural pigments at the event activity table
Visitor artwork from the event (yellow and red: turmeric, green and tan: buckthorn, pink: pokeweed, blue: red cabbage)

 

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.