Two and a half years ago a rare progressive retinal disease started to affect my daily life. The condition is irreversible and, it will progress but I am told by my retinal specialist that it will not lead to total blindness! Though the distortion I see constantly has made it impossible to drive, to read other than black-background white type, and sometimes even to cross a street or parking lot alone.
One thing that I am still able to do, and that has been a lifeline as I come to terms with this impairment, is my craft of botanical contact printing: the printing of fresh leaves and flowers on fabric (and, more recently, on bisque ware). My work has been praised and my audience has slowly grown on Instagram and Facebook over the past two years. I’ve found that though I’ve been working much slower these days, my results have improved!
This passion and the pure joy I have in creating these things of natural beauty have led me to go one step further and establish this website with the aid of my beloved offspring, Obie. I’ve been very successful at the few artisan fairs that I do, but I thought this website and Shopify platform would be a new place to display my work in a broader way, and perhaps, frankly, to sell more of it!
I print on a variety of materials. I prefer to use vintage or pre-owned fabrics because they give me many more options and often are made of better-quality material. Older fabrics and designs evoke past eras and memories. I also use new items to transform the usual to the unusual.
Each piece requires an hours-long process in which fabric is first treated with a mordant to ensure that the natural dyes and flower and leaf prints are as colorfast and lightfast as possible. I then lay leaves and flowers onto the fabric, which is rolled tightly and steamed in a pot on an outdoor wood cookstove. After steaming and unrolling comes “the reveal.”
My work is deeply connected with the natural world and the repurposing of fabric items that might otherwise end up in a landfill.