Botanical printing & Wearable art
The imprints of leaves, plants, and grasses create the figures floating across silky satin. Rich colors with striking iridescence and luminosity are derived from plant pigments and tannins within each leaf. Each silk scarf is a unique piece of wearable art.
Originating thousands of years ago in Asia and India, the practice of printing color from local plants is the basis of my textile art. Many of the leaves on my fabrics come from the street trees in Philadelphia, city parks, and the Delaware waterfront.
Scarves are 19mm silk satin and 13” x 70”; 8mm and 12mm silk habotai 15” x 60”.
Building on the traditions of natural dyes, I often use onion skins, madder root, pomegranate, and oak gall to create a palette of backgrounds and fields. The leaf forms impart a ghostly image and at times a photo-realistic imprint. Colors shift and change across plant species and in reaction to environmental conditions. Leaves in the spring offer different tonalities than those in the fall. Colors are intensified or muted when dye bath chemistry includes aluminum, iron, and copper. The natural world exhibits incredible diversity; as no two leaves are the same, my fabrics are also one of a kind.