8 sessions 2018:
Sundays 2-5.30pm April 8, May 13, June 10, July 8, Aug 12, Sept 9
Tuesdays 6-9pm June 26, July 31
$75
REGISTER for the Trillium Community Dyers Club
This new monthly program is a chance for community members to dip toes into the world of the natural dye pot. Led by Nicola Hodges, the group will collaborate to harvest and steward some of the dye plants that grow at Trillium North Park, and collectively make small dyed sculptural installations to dot the landscape, daylighting for other park users the colours found in plants that grow all around us.
This group includes 6 registered spaces for the entire program, and 4 free drop in spaces sponsored by Vancouver Park Board Neighbourhood Matching Program for people who can’t commit to a full program but would like to step in occasionally and participate (these tickets released through Eventbrite 2 weeks before workshops date).
Dyes include snowberry, lupin, St John’s wort, and other flowers, barks and roots that grow at Trillium.
Note this program is not focused on dying materials for personal use, but dying fibre for collaborative site specific installations.
Instructor Profile:
Through a passion for knitting and textile crafts, Nicola Hodges explores daily hand making and the possibilities of adornment in the practical everyday as a way to reopen the connection to personal traditions, natural materials and the land. It’s a fascination with fiber and all the ways we twist and form it into our everyday lives that have led Nicola to explore everything from knitting, spinning, ropemaking and knot-tying to raising sheep and growing the plants to dye these important textile parts of our lives.
Nicola is a young community-engaged artist whose mentors have included Sharon Kallis, Rebecca Graham, Anna Hunter and Carla Bergman. In 2012 she traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico, to study traditional natural dyeing and tapete weaving with the Vida Nueva Cooperativa, associated with Universidad de la Tierra; and in 2015 she lived in Scotland, working on sheep farms and studying textile histories around the country, particularly the islands of Shetland, Orkney, and the Inner and Outer Hebrides.
Nicola now works at Maiwa Handprints as well as teaching knitting, spinning, ropework and natural dyeing with EartHand and different yarn stores around Vancouver. She has studied natural dyeing with the Maiwa School of Textiles, learning from Charllotte and Sophena Kwon, Danielle Bush and Ann Harmer. In 2017 she led open studio workshops over the summer at EartHand’s Trillium studio working with members of the community, teaching rope making and dyeing with materials from the garden as well as working out of the Weaving Wagon at the 150+ festival teaching the public rope making and spinning with phormium tenax and wool.