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!
April 5th: Mycelium Sculpture with Visiting Artist Kate Klingbeil
We had a wonderful crowd in attendance for Kate Klingbeil’s visiting artist talk and sculpture workshop! OSU staff, students, faculty, and community members gathered in the print shop during this event to learn the practice of sculpting with mycelium. Klingbeil, whose work often focuses on celebrating the unseen realm of soil, was drawn to explore this medium for creation as a way of working in partnership with the more than human world. These pieces are a collaboration between the fungi and the sculptor to realize the final product.
Sculpting with mycelium involves the creation of a mold that can be filled with substrate (sawdust, rice bran, etc) inoculated in fungal spawn. As the fungi grow, their mycelium spreads throughout the substrate to act as a ‘glue’, resulting in a form that will hold its shape once removed from the mold. Local waste stream materials– like takeout containers, empty bottles, and cardboard boxes– were provided to participants to make mold shapes. Substrates included soybean chaff, sawdust, hemp hurds, straw, and more. Examples of a student mold (left) and one created by the artist (right) can be seen above.
Photo of the ‘Substrate Bar’ full of different materials for growing mycelium and filling our molds
Thank you to Kate for sharing this innovative artistic technique and letting us be part of your fungal network! Anyone interested in organizing a similar workshop with Kate should reach out to her at kateklingbeil@gmail.com. Participant photos from the event can also be submitted to this google form.
We have many people to thank for the execution of this wonderful event. Thank you to Jessie Horning and the Print Studio for providing space for this event to occur. Thank you to Natasha Woods and the Graduate Student Art Club for arranging this visiting artist. Thank you to the Feminist Research, Education, and Engagement (FREE) Center for providing additional funding for workshop materials.
Thank you to the following local partners for donating substrate materials for students to use in this workshop as well: The Cannabis Museum in Athens, Ohio (hemp hurds), Woodcraft on Bethel Road (sawdust), and the McHale Soybean Breeding Program on Waterman Farm (soybean chaff).
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.
Join Visiting Artist Kate Klingbeil in the Hopkins Hall Print Shop (Room 266) on April 5th, 2024 4:00-7:00pm to make your own sculpture using fungal mycelium and up-cycled materials! Please see the above flyer for more details, and RSVP to woods.986@osu.edu to attend (seats are limited). More information on the artist’s work can be found here or on her Instagram @k8klingbeil.
This event is made possible through the Graduate Student Art Club, the Living Art and Ecology Lab, and generous funding from The Ohio State Center for Feminist Research, Education, and Engagement (FREE Center).
