Description
Curious about fungi? Have a love affair with color? Combine your interests and explore the realm of color created from mushrooms. They have long been used as a source of natural color, yielding some of nature’s most vibrant colors. In this workshop, artist, farmer and creator of the Mushroom Color Atlas Julie Beeler will teach students how to identify and unlock the hidden colors within easy to identify wild mushrooms and transform them into dyes, pigments, paints and inks.
The workshop will begin with a day in the forest, where participants will learn to identify and forage for dye mushrooms with guidance from Julie. The following two days will be spent in the studio, exploring various mushroom dye techniques, including making pigments, inks, and watercolors. Participants will learn how to extract dyes from mushrooms and create their own pigments. By the end of the workshop, they will have mushroom-dyed fiber samples, a hand-dyed bandana, pigment, paint, ink samples, and an instructional craftbook, along with a solid understanding of how to find, forage, and identify dye mushrooms.
About the Instructor
Julie Beeler is an acclaimed designer, artist and educator inspired by the natural world. Her work has been featured by The New York Times, Popular Science, The Smithsonian Institution and The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, among others.
Julie created the Mushroom Color Atlas website to unveil and celebrate the resplendent chromatic universe hidden within the fungi kingdom, making it accessible to people around the world. Her book The Mushroom Color Atlas, recently published by Chronicle Books, is a comprehensive primer on the universe of colors lurking inside fungi. It is equal parts art book, field guide, and dye-making workshop. In every form her effort is a timeless reference that will be used for years to come.
Prior to immersing herself in the wonder of the fungi kingdom, Julie spent a decades-long career at the vanguard of interactive design. As co-founder of Second Story, she worked with many of the world’s greatest museums and cultural institutions crafting immersive environments that blended the digital and physical worlds. For seven years, she was on the faculty of PNCA and OCAC, and now is a teacher at Wildcraft Studio School in Portland. In 2018 she founded Bloom & Dye, a natural dye studio and farm in the Pacific Northwest ideally situated for foraging mushrooms, growing fresh-cut color, and creating fine art.
Learn More
www.juliebeeler.com
Materials List
You will need to bring:
For the field trip to the forest students need to bring: water bottle, sack lunch, collecting basket or bag, knife for cutting mushrooms. Participants must wear good sturdy shoes for walking in the woods. Participants need to bring layered clothing and be prepared for weather, including rain gear.
For the work in the fiber studio you can bring an apron and pen. If you want to wear gloves in the dye pot, bring a pair.
Provided by instructors:
Mushroom dye chart
Various fiber samples
Dye mushrooms
Dye pigments
Paint
Paper
Print making materials
Silk bandana
Other various supplies and tools to make and create the different samples along with books and a craft notebook that includes mushroom dye recipes.