Fiber artists love dying their materials, but being able to use the same thing to dye fabrics or natural fibers for making art is a big plus. We in Jamestown have a lant that delivers both. Rhubarb is northern climes springtime enchantress.
It takes only a few of the lush green leaves to encircle an umbrella top. Next to elephant ear (Colocasia or Alocasia) the leaves of this piquant spring dessert plant could wrap up a child from top to bottom. But the stems we use for dessert is not its sole use.
In the world of fiber artists, rhubarb plants function as either a colorant ( ranging from yellows, oranges to greens and warm browns) or a mordant to help “set” colorants using other dye-stuffs. In Jenny Dean’s “Wild Color,” a beautifully illustrated book on natural dye materials, she includes a good section on dye stuff ( dying colorants) and mordants (the acids, minerals, etc used to “set” colors). The book includes just about every flower we grow here as a coloring agent, but also clear instructions for how to build copper and iron mordants that set coloring agents used in dying.
Two experts from this part of the world, (the late) Joyce Lusk and Audrey Kloubec (from Fargo) each knew far more than I do about dyes and fiber art. Audrey was a Jamestown College trustee in the 1990s, and a donor to the college’s fine arts department. She raised sheep on the family ranch and sheared, spun and wove the wool.
Joyce used a number of fibers and dyed her materials in studi.
