Please join artist Julia Rose Sutherland for an overview of her interdisciplinary practice, with a focus on her craft-based textile work. Grounded in natural dye processes, ethical foraging practices, and her perspective as an Indigenous artist, her work centers relationships to land, material, and community, exploring how dye practices can carry cultural knowledge, responsibility, and reciprocity.
Sutherland will also speak about her role as co-director of the OCADU Sustainable Colour Lab (SCL), a research space dedicated to relational approaches to place, space, and time through colour. The lab focuses on sourcing pigments from local, ethically gathered materials and supports land-based learning and shared knowledge. Through this work, SCL advances holistic approaches to art-making that consider the full lifecycle of materials while challenging reliance on synthetic and petrochemical-based processes.
She will also share insights from two current research projects: How to Have a Fest, as well as an ongoing exploration of natural dyeing with invasive plant species such as phragmites, rooted in attentive and ethical foraging practices.
Later on Thursday, May 14, Sutherland will lead a quillwork processing and dyeing workshop at the Treaty Space Gallery from 2-5 pm. Space is limited – register here.
Learn more about the OCADU Sustainable Colour Lab.
The Sow to Sew Speakers’ Series is part of the Sow the Sew Project at NSCAD University, which is funded by a generous donation from The Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation.
