Ecological Arts by Rebecca Burgess

"The role of Ecological Arts is to create art in order to understand and revitalize natural systems. Founder Rebecca Burgess has been a teacher and artist for many years."

As an environmental educator and textile artist, I am consistently looking for ways to engage students and the public in hands-on textile arts techniques that move us one step closer to living in greater harmony with the planet.

Ecological Arts offers a series of workshops
on using natural dyes and weaving.

I created EcologicalArts in 2004 as a way to house the sustainable textile arts processes that I was both creating and learning from other artisans around the world. Inspired initially by villages like Pejeng, Bali, and Sukhonakon, Thailand, places where women grow and spin organic cotton, raise and ferment indigo, and work cooperatively to produce beautiful finished goods. These villages illuminated sustainable textile production for me. Upon returning home, I felt the calling to start my own tradition.

California Fleuristic Province, home of Ecological Arts.

I live in the California Fleuristic Province, it is among the 25 most bio-diverse places on the planet. I felt there must be species here, in my homeland, that I can use for color- and thus avoid the carbon footprint incurred from ordering all of my dyes from overseas, or even out of state. In the process, I have become a natural dye harvester, restoration gardener, and an unintentional steward. I prune, I weed, I replant, and I seed- it's all a part of the harmonious and reciprocal process. Stewardship and dye work are now hand-in-hand activities for me. My garden is both a restoration site for native and useful dye plants, and an experimentation zone of Indigo, prairie wildflowers, and pokeberry.

From plant life to yarn color, dyes by Ecological Arts.

While there are still dyes such as cochineal, and logwood, whose colors I have not found sustainably harvested substitutes for, I was able to find and create recipes for every color of my hearts desire. And, there is still a lifetime of experimentation left in the fields and hillsides of my homeland.


As a canvas for these natural colors- I connected with the local sheep ranchers, angora producers and organic cotton farmers. These relationships have given me the opportunity to economically support local fiber producers. They create some of the highest quality raw materials in the world, and yet their origins are at most 70 miles from my home!


These processes I undertake are nothing new in history, they are in fact quite ancient, and yet- I feel that every moment of creating with nature’s raw materials is a novel experience. The permutations and possibilities for what a textile artist can do with the resources within his or her community is truly stunning.

Yarns by Ecological Arts.

Rebecca Burgess graduated from UC Davis in Art History, and while in the central valley spent time studying at DQ Native American University. Searching for art outside the academic canon, she found a Native American basket weaver. The artistry, ecology, and function of the native baskets became her inspiration. While traveling throughout the United States, and Asia she found remnants of ecologically focused textile art traditions.
Through each investigation she became increasingly inspired to begin a local tradition within her own bio-region. Ecologicalarts was born in 2004. An organization dedicated to creating, reviving, and teaching, art forms that utilize resources to promote thriving eco-systems.

Rebecca is a member of the Fiber Focus Group, has a blog, website and sells on Etsy.



Find more photos like this on Fiber Focus

Ecological Arts by Rebecca Burgess

Guest Artist: Rachel Koniar of Secret Snowbird

Detail, The Wedding

Fibers were not my first love. They were in the peripheral, embroidery on a backpack, sewing a Halloween costume, dabbling there and there. The focus of all my mentors and teachers had been painting, drawing, painting.

Eve

The Battle

The joy of fibers was a backhanded thing; outside of the classroom. It didn’t become a means of expression until I moved to the shores of Lake Superior.

Pea Pod Sculpture

I was studying art education in Duluth which at the time, had enacted a smoking ban. After many previous attempts to snub the habit, it was the combination of smoke free buildings and cold Duluth winters (-20ºF not uncommon) that did it. Cigaretteless and left with the need to fidget, I turned to my knitting needles in earnest. I began knitting a pair of socks between a drawing and a ceramics class.

Rag Rug

This became the first fiber sculpture. The sock was knit down from cuff to toe on a set of five double pointed needles. As the ribbed cuff slowly emerged I was absolutely enamored with its shape. The knit tube would stand on its own when set down: a perfect ribbed cone rising from size two wooden needles. The finished product as a sock was a disappointment. It was a more satisfying form before it had a heal and toe.

Pear Cone Sculptures

My knit sculptures have all since been a variation on the sock cuff form. While I have experimented with different shapes, I always felt it was important to create works in fibers. Mostly I want to add my voice to the craft vs. art debate. Why was it that color added with paint to cloth (canvas) was Art, but color added by thread to cloth was just a quilt? Shouldn’t more embroidery be in art museums? My sculptures are to be a reminder that fibers in one’s home are Art too: the hand stitched sampler, the knit scarf, the hardanger lace, or the hand pieced quilt.

For me, the medium is never far from the message. A sculpture made from a worn out, hand made, rag rug stands as a testament to the beauty of home. To paint with stitches and not a brush is to honor the creative tradition in my maternal line. A soft felted form, is tactile and inviting not unlike a warm blanket.

Sunny Cone Sculptures

While I still paint, knitting is a daily companion. Fibers easily create the most satisfying tactile textures and forms. Who can resist the rhythmic, soothing click of knitting needles? Skeins of wool and wooden needles find their way into every room. Unfinished knit sculptures peak out from baskets and coffee tables, completed felted ones sit atop bookshelves huddled in groups, peering over the ledge. When my work surrounds me- I am home.

Wee Pods

Rachel Koniar is an artist and educator living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She graduated from the University of Minnesota Duluth in 2005 with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Art Education. Her work has been shown at The Tweed Museum of Art, Nutty Meg’s, Altered Esthetics, and The Beat. While she has taught students ages kindergarten through twelfth through out Minnesota, she is currently teaching 8th graders in Wayzata and a Textiles & Fibers class at Watershed High School in Minneapolis. She has also taught summer classes through the Minneapolis Institute of Art.


You can find Rachel's work and contact her both at her store on Etsy, Secret Snowbird or on her website, Rachel Koniar. She also has PDF patterns for some of her cone sculptures available in her Etsy store.

The Flood

Guest Artist: Rachel Koniar of Secret Snowbird

KUSIKUY Slow Fashion Pulling Ahead

by Tamara Stenn

KUSIKUY is Slow Fashion.

"Slow Fashion exists in a thoughtful, sustainable apparel market."
- Treehugger Blogger

Slow Fashion garments are carefully hand made of locally sourced, natural materials. There is minimum (if any) processing of these materials. Materials are natural, intact, just as nature intended them to be. This leads to garments that are made with premium fibers, ones that are not weakened through chemical processes and ones that will wear well and last longer.

Kusikuy sells yarn and hand-carved buttons on their website.

KUSIKUY's Andean alpaca is the perfect example of a slow fiber. Our free range, indigenous herds produce the finest alpaca in the world. KUSIKUY sweaters last an average of 10 years and can be machine washed hundreds of time. Slow fashion labor practices are fair. Tailors and knitters are careful experts in garment construction and are paid well for their expertise.

Slow Fashion is also sustainable. Being locally sourced and hand made, cuts down on transportation and helps to grow and support communities. KUSIKUY's indigenous knitters are also organic farmers. Today they are more dependent on sweater production now that the tropical glaciers are melting and drying up. These glaciers once provided water for Andean crops. Now the underground, glacial-fed aquifers are gone. Crops can no longer be grown and a life sustaining income is lost. Knitting has helped to replace some of this lost income through knitting work. Buying fibers direct from local herdsman also extends the earnings made by the community.

Kusikuy Knitters in Bolivia

"Slow Fashion also rejects the trend-focused planned obsolescence that has driven the fashion industry for decades," explains Elaine Lipson, writer, artist and sustainable textile expert. Lispon also explains, "Slow Fashion emphasizes lasting design and craftsmanship, so you can buy fewer clothes with a longer life. Design and color palettes are compatible from season to season, so you can build a wardrobe instead of replacing everything in an increasingly rapid and wasteful cycle. Brand loyalty and quality replace quantity." More information (and books) on slow fashion, organics, and fashion can be found at Lipson's website http://lainie.typepad.com/redthread/2008/01/slow-cloth-fash.html

Slow fashion saves you, the consumer, time and money. No longer you have to spend time and gas traveling to stores constantly shopping for clothes. Slow Fashion clothes last longer, look nicer, and in the long run cost less. Plus you now have favorite clothes you look forward to wearing, have a relationship with, and remember. (Note: How many items do we forget are even in our closets because we never wear them? They are too hard to clean, the color is off, we are waiting for the style to come back in fashion, etc.).

Here's an example: Lets say an average factory made wool sweater costs $35 and lasts a season. Then stitches come apart, it pills, stretches, shrinks, and in general is no longer is in style. So another sweater is purchased the following year at the same throw-away price of $35. In six years $210 and countless hours and gas have been spent on buying and replacing "cheap fashion" sweaters. The average KUSIKUY hand knit, luxury quality, alpaca sweater costs $185 and lasts not six but 10 years! So KUSIKUY sweaters are actually much "cheaper" than the un-sustainable throw-away fashions that we may normally buy.

And the savings is not just in your own purse, but in your world too. By buying a KUSIKUY (or any) Slow Fashion garment, you are saving your world from throw away garments entering landfills, the carbon contamination from overseas shipping, and the use of slave-like labor practices often associated with cheap, factory, "throw away fashion" manufacturing.

Slow fashion is mindful, careful, consumerism that fosters positive relationships with the world and its people, of which we all are a part.


Founded in Bolivia in 1997, KUSIKUY was developed by US Peace Corps volunteer, Tamara Stenn. Upon finishing her work with the Peace Corps she returned to the United States to earn a Masters in Intercultural Management from the School for International Training. Inspired by fellow Fair Trade counterparts, KUSIKUY has grown from a small home based business to become an international internet retailer and wholesaler.

In 2004 KUSIKUY became a proud member of the Organic Trade Association and expanded its line of hand made natural clothing to include EKO certified organic pima cotton. Tamara saw a need for more support for the development of organic clothing cooperatives. In 2001, AYLLU, Inc. a 501c3 non profit, was created to help with grass roots development in the Andes and the education of consumers about of benefits of using Fair Trade and organic products. In June 2007 KUSIKUY's headquarters town, Brattleboro, Vermont, became the 2nd Fair Trade Town in the USA. This initiatve was created and backed by KUSIKUY and AYLLU.

KUSIKUY Slow Fashion Pulling Ahead

Huichol Yarn Paintings: Visions Destroyed by Poison

copyright © 1975, yarn painting by Tutukila Carrillo / photo by Lloyd Patrick Baker

We normally think of using yarn to knit, crochet, or weave into garments, bags, rugs, hats, mittens, and other functional objects. The Huichol of Mexico, however, use it to "paint" sacred images that are connected with their Spiritual life. The yarn paintings evolved from making images from found objects (shells, nuts, twigs, etc.) and pressing them into a mixture of pine resin and beeswax. The first major exhibit of yarn paintings was held in 1962 in Guadalajara with simple images. (Wikipedia) Since then, especially Huichol who have migrated to the cities, the technique has been elevated to an elaborate art form with distinguished artists selling their work for several hundreds of dollars.

Wikipedia map of Huichol area

The Huichol refer to themselves as Wixáritari ("the people") in their native language. (Wikipedia) An estimated 7,000 remain in their native lands in the Sierra Madre, while another 13,000 have migrated to other parts of Mexico. The terrain in the mountains is rugged and difficult to traverse. This has meant a difficult life for the Huichol in eeking out a livelihood from poor soil, but it has also been the reason for them maintaining their culture and belief system intact for so many centuries.

Huichol homeland terrain, photo courtesy of the Huichol Center

The Huichol practice a peyote-based religion of ancestor worship that is centered on nature. Juan Negrin writes:

"The story of the Creation of the World chronicles the manner in which the ancestors emerged from an amorphous existence in darkness to find the way to light and harmonious life. Having accomplished their designs, the ancestors died physically. Following the ways of the ancestors involves the women preparing food, sweeping, weaving and caring for the young, while the men work in the fields, collect wood, build thatch roof silos and houses for the ancestors, and hunt the deer. It also involves invoking the god-Ancestors and reenacting their feats in drama-filled celebrations and pilgrimages to the five points of the earth: the center and the four corners. Through this ritualistic lifestyle, repeating timeless actions and actually impersonating the ancestors, the Huichol attempt to establish a direct relationship with the animistic spirits of nature which are none other than their Ancestors. This philosophy of life culminates eventually in death, when the wise join the pantheon of the Ancestors, becoming spirit allies and guides for their descendants.

The manifestations of the Ancestors are concrete and take such forms as earth, sun, fire, water, wind, corn, deer, rivers and rocks. The Ancestors give life and sustenance to the Huichol, while the Indian renews the powers of the Ancestors by his ritualistic conduct. The traditional way draws past and future together in an unbounded present that is a never-ending process of creation. What is here now existed before the world was created, only it now has a form and an identity supported by the activity of man in his symbiotic partnership with the ancestor spirits."

Indigo Arts Gallery: Peyote Mother (#JBS13)
Huichol yarn painting by Jose Benitez Sanchez, Nayarit, Mexico, c. 2005, $235

The Huichol are as colorful in their dress as reflected in their paintings. The following three photos are courtesy of The Huichol Center's archives, an organization dedicated to providing the Huichol with social services, health care, literacy and empowerment:

Huichol Shaman

Huichol Peyote Face Painting Ceremony

Huichol children

Wikipedia photo of woman and child

The Huichol are adept at many other forms of textile arts. They weave, sew, embroider, decorating their surroundings and clothing with bright, colorful motifs, much of which incorporates religious symbolism in the same way, although in a simplified version, as the yarn paintings. I have noticed that many cultures around the world who live in difficult, arid terrain work in these bright colors, while many forest peoples work with an earthier color palette. Perhaps this is one way to balance out the lack of or over abundance of color in Nature. Many of the Huichol crafts have found their way to the tourist market or to retail outlets who strive to help theml earn income in this way. Hands Around the World works closely with Huichol families and market dolls like the one in the photo, as well as beaded work (also embedded in bees wax and pine resin) and many other crafts. Indigo Arts Gallery is a gorgeous site with ethnic art from around the world. They sell top quality yarn paintings, portraying each Huichol artist with sensitivity and a good history on both the item and artist. The piece below and one earlier in the article are two examples of the beautiful work they have available.

Indigo Arts Gallery: Peyote Ceremony in the Sacred Land of Wirikuta (#MRC11)
Huichol yarn painting by Maximino Renteria de la Cruz,
Nayarit, Mexico, c. 2006 $4,200

Unfortunately, life for the Huichol, is not as bright and colorful as their paintings and art. All of these attempts at marketing their work has not brought in enough income to bring them out of poverty. So, many Huichol leave the Sierra Madre Occidental for periods where they will work as cheap labor in tobacco fields. The following video explains what happens:



These people are being poisoned, plain and simple. Pesticides that are illegal in the United States are used openly by companies in Mexico and other developing countries. The Huichol and other laborers are given no protection or guidance in how to use them. They are dropping dead. Like so many indigenous groups around the world, these people are considered expendable. The Huichol Center for Cultural Survival and Traditional Arts identifies the problems facing the Huichol in detail. They also have instituted viable options to combat these problems. The Center is requesting help from the International community to help them achieve the goals they have of literacy, increase job opportunities in the Huichol lands, promote sustainable agriculture, and, above all, that the Huichol achieve recognition as part of the "First People" movement, where indigenous groups receive government recognition as a people who need to be protected from the intrusions of modern development.

As Susana Valadez from the Huichol Center states, "It is sad to think that this viable living culture might soon be converted into remnants under glass at the local museum..."

More Huichol crafts available at the Singing Shaman Traders.

Huichol Yarn Paintings: Visions Destroyed by Poison