Workshops
Making Hours: Resist-Dye Fabric with Indigo
Welcome in the wonders of blue with natural dyer Kenya Miles, founder of Blue Light Junction.
In this workshop, participants will explore various ways to resist and dye fabric in indigo. Indigo is a magical color that is one of the oldest documented in the tombs of Egypt and pre-Columbian objects found in Peru. It has a vibrancy and energy all its own.
Kenya Miles will guide you in techniques that originate in India, Asia and West Africa and discuss how this blue alchemy has long been an art and practice. Participants will leave with a bandana of their own creation. No prior experience required.
This workshop is offered in connection with the BMA’s Turn Again to the Earth initiative.
Schedule
5:30-6 p.m. — Check-in at Joseph Education Center Studio
6-8:30 p.m. — Workshop
Tickets
$20 BMA Members
$30 Non-Members
About the Artist
Kenya Miles is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and the alchemist behind Traveling Miles Studio. A one woman textile and fine art studio utilizing sustainable materials from earth pigments to natural dyes. Kenya’s work honors ancient practices while harmoniously drawing on a distinctive contemporary voice. From the valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico to the red clay roads of Ntonso, Ghana, Kenya’s process is a ledger of years of wandering and apprenticing around the globe.
Kenya has facilitated workshops at the Berkeley Art Museum, Headlands Center for the Arts, the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden and Maryland Institute College of Art. She was a guest artist at Berkeley Art Museum’s “The Possible” and, in 2019, had a solo exhibition “The Central Sun” in San Francisco. From 2019-2020, Kenya was an Artist-in-Residence and farmer in the Baltimore Natural Dye Initiative. In January 2020, Kenya founded Blue Light Junction, a natural dye studio, alternative color lab, retail space, dye garden & educational facility in central Baltimore. Blue Light Junction focuses on growing, processing, and preserving the history of natural dyes and their artistic, practical, and commercial applications. In 2022-2023, Kenya was a USC Annenberg Civic Media Fellow, a Braiding Seeds Fellow (2023-2024) and a Center For Craft Teaching Artist (2024).