Textile Ecologies: Pattern, Printing & Place
with Isa Rodrigues and Ricki Dwyer
$175 lab fee | June 14–27 | Skill-building
In this course, students will explore textile patterning through eco-conscious surface design techniques. Working with nature as inspiration, material source, and collaborator, students will engage processes such as natural dyeing, mordant printing, cyanotype, and paste resists to create patterned textiles. Special attention will be given to observing natural systems and working with the sun, water, and wind as active agents in the creative process. Through field observation, experimentation, and reflection, students will develop a personal visual language rooted in ecological awareness and collaboration with the living world. We will consider how principles of community, regeneration, and ephemerality inform textile practice, studying the work of Ana Mendieta, Yto Barrada, and Maria Elena Pombo. Readings will include selections from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and In Pursuit of Color by Lauren MacDonald, which together frame material practice as both an artistic and ethical inquiry. Assignments will guide students in designing and producing a series of patterned textile samples and one final project that integrates natural processes as both technique and conceptual framework. Technical demonstrations will be paired with discussions on sustainability, care, and responsible practice, supporting each student in building a process that is both materially and environmentally responsive.
SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code PRINT 636 001.
Isa Rodrigues (she/her) is a textile artist and educator. Through research and practice, her work explores how textiles can serve as archives of our experience of the natural world. She is also interested in craft education as a means to create community and preserve material culture. A founding member of New York’s Textile Arts Center, where she worked as Co-Executive Director from 2015 to 2021, she also founded the project Sewing Seeds (2010–15), activating natural dye gardens in empty lots and community gardens in Brooklyn. She is currently a co-lead for the Textile Dye Garden at Pratt Institute and a collaborator of The Mothership, an eco-feminist project by Yto Barrada in Tangier, Morocco. Rodrigues teaches textile techniques and materiality at Pratt Institute, Ox-Bow, the Rhode Island School of Design, and Textile Arts Center, among others.
Ricki Dwyer (he/they) explores how textiles can inform and strengthen our sense of embodiment. A recipient of the Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Award, the San Francisco Artist Grant, and the San Francisco Queer Cultural Center’s Emerging Scholars Award, Dwyer has had solo exhibitions with Anglim/Trimble, San Francisco; Rupert, Vilnius, Lithuania; and Volume Gallery, Chicago. In 2022, he participated in the Biennale de Lyon in collaboration with Nicki Green. He has been an artist-in-residence at Jupiter Woods, Textile Arts Center, ARTHAUS Havana, the Kohler Co. Pottery and Foundry, and Yto Barrada’s The Mothership. In 2024, Dwyer was a Bronx Museum AIM Fellow. He received his undergraduate degree in Fibers from the Savannah College of Art and Design and his MFA from the University of California, Berkeley. Dwyer currently teaches with Parsons School of Design.