On the Map 2024, Iviva Olenick from Brooklyn, NY

Happy September,

It has been such a busy year filled with surprises and honorable moments, especially with Indigo events. Today, I'm sharing an Indigo story and the experiences submitted by Iviva Olenick, a talented textile artist and educator based in Brooklyn, NY.

1. Location & Environment

I live in Brooklyn, NY, and partner with several local urban farms and gardens to

grow indigo. I do not have my own dedicated garden. The place where I most consistently grow indigo is on Governors Island at GrowNYC's Teaching Garden. Because it's an island, the weather patterns are slightly different from where I live in Brooklyn. The farm gets direct sun with little shade, so when it's hot, it's even hotter on the farm, and the humidity tends to be

higher. The plants require regular water, which they get through sprinkler "tape" running

through the beds. I grow Isatis tinctoria (known colloquially as Eurasian indigo, woad, medieval indigo), and polygonum tinctorium (Japanese indigo). The woad is technically invasive (although we've not had issues with it) and re-seeds each year. I typically need to

plant new Japanese indigo seeds each year, except for one year when it reseeded itself.

Photos of Isatis tinctoria (Woad) plants submitted by Iviva Olenick

2. Indigo plants & practices

In 2017, I successfully grew polygonum tinctorium, Japanese indigo, and indigofera

tinctorium, tropical indigo, which was a Southern cash crop in the mid 1700s. I

seeded these at home in my small apartment, later transplanting them to Wyckoff

Farm on the East Flatbush-Canarsie border in Brooklyn. The tropical indigo didn't

take upon transplantation; the Japanese indigo grew well but our attempts to follow

pigment extraction methods detailed in books was unsuccessful.

In 2018, I approached GrowNYC about growing indigo on their Governors Island

Farm. They said yes, and we built several beds from scratch. I enlisted friends

throughout NYC to plant indigo seeds at home, and had help from the Education

Department at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We ended up filling beds with

Japanese indigo and a little bit of woad. I persisted in learning dye extraction

methods, which included extracting pigment through fermentation over several

days, adding slaked lime, agitating and letting pigment settle; and going straight

from leaves to dye by heating the leaves in a double boiler to a water temperature

of 160° until leaves turn a reddish brown. Adding an alkaline and agitating, and then

adding thiourea dioxide to reduce oxygen in the vat. I then heated the vat to 110°F

and dipped fabrics in multiple times. The blue never got very dark, but it was a true

purply-blue versus the turquoise from the salt rub method, which I also use.

Photos of Isatis tinctoria (Woad) plants submitted by Iviva Olenick

3. Culture & Story of the region

The types of indigo I grow are not native to Brooklyn. I became interested in indigo because of its colonial history, and wanting to uplift the cultural knowledge and labor of enslaved West Africans, which were exploited to make tropical indigo a successful cash crop. The project has evolved to take a broader intercultural look at indigo cultivation and production, incorporating dye-making methods used around the world, adapted to the limitations of contemporary Brooklyn, which is increasingly hot, humid, and climatically unpredictable.

Indigo inspired textile artwork by Iviva Olenick

Many Shades of Indigo Blue (left), Many Shades of Indigo (right). Pieced, indigo-dyed silk and cotton fabrics. 2022

Indigo Dreams handwoven artist book with indigo leaf-printed yarn and fabric, and yarn dyed with indigo ink. 18"x8.5"x1", 2024.

Connect

Follow on Instagram: @iviva_in_brooklyn

On the Map 2023, Jessica Pinsky from Praxis Fiber Workshop, Cleveland, OH

Happy October,

I am honored to be invited to Praxis by founder, Jessica Pinsky, for a reading of my book My Indigo World and tataki-zome workshop this Sunday (October 15th) in Cleveland, OH! I wanted to share more about Praxis' commitment to their community in building a an environment centered around a shared love of fiber and Sukumo indigo.

This blog was written and submitted by Jessica Pinsky.

1. Location & Environment

Praxis is located in North Collinwood, a neighborhood on the east side of Cleveland, OH in the county of Cuyahoga. The terms “Cuyahoga” and “Ohio” are both derived from languages of various Indigenous tribes that lived here for thousands of years. We recognize those people for their careful stewardship of this land and acknowledge the thousands of Native Americans who today call Northeast Ohio home.

Although most Americans own a piece of denim in their wardrobe, most don’t know its origin and connection to slavery in our country. In a neighborhood whose population is majority African American, it is important to Praxis to hold the memory of this complex history within our indigo practice. It is also important to promote a safe, socially inclusive, and equality-d

riven, farming practice for a crop that was historically discriminatory and dangerous. We make sure to explain that African indigo was majority grown in this country, we are invested in the japanese tradition here at Praxis.

2. Indigo plants & practices

Praxis Fiber Workshop connects our community to a broad picture of the contemporary and historic textile field. We share about textiles as they grow from the land all the way to the most advanced technological equipment. When it came to growing, we were complete novices. It wasn’t until meeting Rowland Ricketts in 2016, we knew we had to grow indigo! Rowland specializes in the Japanese tradition of sukumo (Polygonum tinctorium). He explained that Japanese indigo would grow best in the climate in northeast Ohio, similar to his set up in Bloomfield, Indiana. And this started our deep dive into growing and processing sukumo! In early 2018, Rowland sent us a bag of seeds harvested in 2016 which were expected to germinate around 30%. We turned to a local org, Cleveland Seed Bank for advice and assistance in starting our seeds and planning our garden. Shortly after, we met the most passionate team of landscapers who adopted us and began to prepare our VERY rough land for a giant community planting day scheduled just days ahead. Dozens of people came to help us plant seedlings that year and it sparked our joy and commitment to seeing this project through. We went to Indiana to learn how to harvest and to see the composting floor Rowland has built and we began to plan for our own facility here in Cleveland. We turned harvesting into giant community parties and shared the joy and magic of indigo with our neighborhood.

After more weeding, watering and harvesting than we ever thought possible, we had only 150 pounds of dried indigo leaves- a far cry from the necessary 400 it takes to produce sukumo. Sukumo is made by composting dried leaves and the large amount is necessary for the compost pile to reach a higher temperature. Undiscouraged, we doubled our funding and doubled our scale in year 2. This time, we involved a local K-8 school and developed a curriculum for the 4th grade where students would create an indigo themed play. With Praxis staff, the students wrote a script, created costumes and a set, all to tell the story of indigo! We were months away from our public production with the 4th graders when the pandemic started.

At this point we relied heavily on volunteers to grow the mass amount of indigo required for sukumo. We had started our seeds, and didn’t know how the project could continue. Because we were unable to gather volunteers for our 2020 growing season, we asked those volunteers to adopt indigo to grow in their home gardens. 75 people grew five indigo plants each at home and every week, Praxis released a YouTube video explaining how to care for the indigo, how to harvest it and education revolving around the dye. This project was so deeply connecting and meaningful during such an isolating time, that we continued in 2021 with an unexpected 200 people participating!! We worked with local artist and dyer Tony Williams to great programming around the weekly videos and finished season 2 with more love than ever for our community project.

It took us almost 4 years and endless labor to create our first ever fermented sukumo vat. Once the composting is complete (a 14 week process where we turn the compost pile each week) we slowly add wood ash lye to the sukumo to create the dye. Rowland came to help us build our very own composting floor - only a few of these are in the US! We partnered with our local wood fire pizza restaurant for the wood ash and slowly made 5 strengths of lye for the vat. We now have a composting floor and continuous vat alive and available for use at Praxis. But, what now? We have been rebuilding our community post pandemic and our collective needs are always changing and evolving. In order to create a program with the needs of the community in mind, we have launched an indigo cooperative. So far, we have 11 members who are meeting monthly to care for, use, create and learn around the Praxis indigo program. We are building a curriculum and ultimately hiring community members to help us expand our dye production. Indigo is truly a collective effort and we have learned so much from this amazing plant.

3. Culture & Story of the region

North Collinwood is a unique district on Cleveland’s east side. Collinwood grew around the rail yards of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway and is divided by these same tracks into the neighborhoods of North and South Collinwood. During the train yard’s most popular days, the close corridor of Waterloo Road was a bustling commercial district. When the train yard closed in 1981 it left over 2,000 Collinwood residents jobless. The economy of the neighborhood has shifted and changed since then, leaving a partially restored, partially sunken community. With assets such as highway access and lakefront property, Collinwood remains a hidden gem in Cleveland. It draws attention from an artistic community attracted to the possibilities of a neighborhood with relatively low real estate value and multitude of vacancies.

When searching Cleveland for the exact location of Praxis in 2012, we fell in love with North Collinwood. We love that this corridor sits within a deeply rooted residential community and hosts foot traffic from many visitors throughout the week. An organization has a responsibility to its neighbors; to provide opportunities to learn and connect. We do this in many ways, but our natural dye initiative is our most mature program. Since 2018, we have grown around 4000 indigo plants per year on two vacant parcels in the residential area of the neighborhood. We lease this land from the city land bank and have made deep connections with the surrounding neighbors since cultivating indigo on this land for the past 5 years. In 2019, we doubled our scale with a second lot which ultimately is located on the vacant parcel next to our Digital Weaving Lab. We are so happy to now have indigo growing on site at the Praxis campus.

3. Mission and Vision

Praxis Fiber Workshop builds the international network of fiber artists and makers through classes, workshops, residencies, and collaborative projects that teach the art form and demonstrate how fiber art can be used to build healthy, resilient, and inclusive communities.

Praxis Fiber Workshop was established in January 2015. In collaboration with Cleveland Institute of Art, Praxis leased the equipment that previously belonged to the Fiber Arts Department and opened as a community arts space in the Waterloo Arts District of Cleveland. The organization is described as a gem among Northeast Ohio’s diverse network of small arts organizations. At the same time, in our short life, we have achieved recognition in national and international circles.

1▪ Service to fiber artists and makers. Praxis offers classes, studio space and exhibition space (for credit to CIA students) to a growing local community, and partners with local schools to reach underserved youth.

2.Neighborhood sustainability. In 2018, Praxis launched a Natural Dye Initiative, growing half an acre of natural indigo in its neighborhood and distributed indigo growing to community members throughout Northeast Ohio.

3▪ Digital Weaving Lab. The Digital Weaving Lab offers boundary-pushing technological weaving equipment to artists from all over the world and includes an apartment for artist residents.

Connect

Praxis Studio: praxisfiberworkshop.org

Contact Praxis' Team: contact@praxisfiberworkshop.org

Follow on Instagram: @praxisfiberworkshop

Indigofest retreat 2023

“My first trip to Jeju Island with my grandma and mom was full of excitement. That’s when I first saw for myself how the blue of the sky meet the blue of the sea” from “My Indigo World” by Rosa Chang

Over the last three years, Indigo Shade Map has been focused on serving as a platform to share and document indigo stories from people all over the world. I’ve decided to begin sharing more of my stories as I’ve been traveling a lot lately. You can continue to follow my and the Indigo Shade map journey through our blog or social media page.

Today, I’m so excited to share my beautiful experience and update everyone about the Indigofest retreat I attended a few weeks ago. I was invited to join the full four days of the Indigofest retreat on August 10-14th, 2023 at Sou'wester Historic Lodge & Vintage Travel Trailer Resort in Seaview, Washington.

I found myself seeing how the blue of the sky met the blue of the sea on my first trip to the beach in Seaview, Washington as I saw it in Jeju Island when I was young. Indigofest retreat is an annual event that was originally co-founded by two amazing artists, natural dyers, and educators, Britt Boles and Iris Sullivan, in 2019. It was my first time joining the Indigofest retreat and I served as one of the 6 blue crew members to assist participants and engage with them during the retreat. Gratefully, I was able to run two book reading sessions with my debut picture book My Indigo World on the last day of the retreat. I’m grateful for both Britt and Iris who offered the space for me to connect with the Sou’wester team while hosting a public book reading session. I’m sharing my personal “best moments” and selected visual memories during Indigofest to say farewell to summertime and celebrate the beginning of the fall.

I can’t stress enough how summer is such an important time to be engaged with natural indigo. Probably any indigo grower and dyer who sees this blog will anticipate it. This summer we harvested loads of indigo plants from our garden/farm and underwent the entire extraction process of the pigment. The humidity and hot sun accelerate the fermentation process, allowing us to earn the precious blue pigments from the fresh indigo leaves… Even the indigo vat making process and the fabric dyeing process, too!

Simply, it was a celebration of Indigo and Mother Nature. I was so struck by seeing Britt and Iris sharing many different ways of dyeing fabrics with natural indigo and each way created different shades of colors, not only blue but even pink and purple! Buckets of a variety of Japanese indigo plants (Polygonum tinctorium / Persaceria tinctoria), cultivated and harvested locally in the Oregon region, were provided during the fresh leaf dyeing session. Personally, I enjoyed joining the fresh leaf dyeing process so much because it reminded me of my ancestors back in my motherland, Korea, who have been practicing the summer event since ancient times.

The beautiful turquoise color of the soaked indigo water, full of indirubin, made so many different shades of blue, purple, and pink!

Building the local vat, an invention by Britt and Iris, was also such a special time.

A fermented indigo vat called “Local vat” created by Britt and Iris by using all locally sourced ingredients: Indigo pigments were extracted from locally grown polygonum tinctorum plants (Oregon), Salal berries (locally grown in the Pacific Northwest region) for the sugar source, and burnt oyster shells (locally sourced) for the alkaline solution!

Free studio times were provided along with Britt and Iris’s detail-oriented dye demonstrations so that participants were able to work on their own personal projects. Reduction vats such as iron vats and Indigold vats (pre-reduced indigo from Stony Creek Colors) were provided with loads of fabrics as well as a large pot of Cassava paste resist and a variety of pattern making tools such as wood blocks, threads, and clamps.

The summer breeze from the ocean in the Pacific Northwest not only cools down the weather but also lets me be peacefully embraced by Mother Nature. I had some unknown heavy feelings leaving behind the reminiscence of the glorious Indigofest retreat and the beautiful indigo blue shades.

During the retreat, I learned about Chinookan people. Britt sold handmade indigo postcards to fundraise in support of the Chinookan people, the original people in the area where the Indigofest is held (Oregon and Washington State). The indigenous people that inhabit the lower columbia river have the most intimate relationship with Mother Nature in the region. She taught us about the awareness of the Chinookan people not being recognized by the federal government after so many years. There are streets and places named after them and their language in the region. They heavily struggle to preserve their habitat, heritage, and culture. I would humbly say learning about the Chinook people was one of the most memorable moments from Indigofest even with so many eye-catching colors and nature…including the cute retro camping cars, wonderful heartwarming people, and the bonfire spent time altogether.

Image from “My Indigo World” by Rosa Chang

The darkest blue sky in the silent night created a peaceful time to listen to my inner self…including in which direction I'm heading toward with the Indigo Shade Map and what the indigo plants have taught me. “Indigo weaves together many lives and people in complex history to better connect one another and the beauty of slow process. Good things take time”.

I hope my first personal blog post with Indigo Shade map leads you to research about Chinookan people as well as the original people/tribes in the area where you reside.

You can find more information about the Chinook Indian Nation or contribute through their website, here. You can find the same link on Indigofest’s homepage as well.

Special thanks to Britt, Iris, and our Blue Crew (Sara, Marian, Wren, Betsy, and Jessica)!

Bye Summer, welcome Fall.

Rosa

Photos: All photos from Rosa (myself)'s iphone.