Beyond Boundaries 2025: how color is place: a natural dye workshop

Workshop taught by sugar todd as a part of PNCA's 2025 Symposium: Beyond Boundaries: Visions of Ecological Futures

how color is place: a natural dye workshop

color has an origin. when you create—with inks, with paints, with dyes—do you know where your color comes from? when we source color with this question in mind, a path to engaging with our environment and our consumption of it opens. natural dye processes offer a way to slow ourselves and tend to a relationship with our materials.

this workshop will focus on where and how color is grown. we invite participants to reflect on color as something that holds time and place, and how cultivating awareness of place expands our sense of self.

within the workshop, participants will be guided through the process of creating resist patterns on a bandana to be naturally dyed. resist dyeing is a technique that uses various materials to create barriers that prevent dye from reaching specific areas of a textile. this workshop will use physical tying and banding techniques to create designs, and bandanas will be dyed with marigold flowers that were grown at empowered flowers farm.

about sugar todd

sugar is sometimes farming, sometimes printmaking, sometimes dyeing, sometimes weaving, always growing, and always rising with the sun.

born and raised in the north american midwest, she moved and travelled around the earth for many years before making the pacific northwest home. she has a bachelor of science in horticulture from oregon state university and is currently pursuing a master of fine art in print media from the pacific northwest college of art. she finds ritual in the rhythm of the seasons and the circular nature of existence. her creative practice slows down, finds space to settle into, and centers materials and process. she is most often guided by curiosity, texture, pattern, and light.

$10
RSVP Required