Nettles for Textiles: Harvesting and Processing Party
- Dates: Wednesday, July 26, 2023, 10 am-4 pm
- Locations: Innisfree Farm and Botanical Garden, 3636 Trent Road, Royston BC V9N 9R4 (5 km south of Courtenay)
- Fee: $145 includes vegetarian lunch (optional vegan and/or gluten-free available)
Join community-engaged environmental artist Juliana Bedoya at the Innisfree Farm and Botanic Garden in Royston to harvest our nettle patch from the fibre and dye garden. We will share in community the lessons and gifts this plant has to offer as food, medicine, dye and ancient textile. We will also discuss when, where, how to harvest, and how to process green or retted stalks for fibre as we go through the different stages and techniques from harvesting to spun yarn. All materials will be provided.
About the Facilitating Artist
Juliana Bedoya is a community-engaged environmental artist who supports individuals and community groups to establish their own cultural significance through skill sharing, including all stages of ethically harvesting and processing raw plant materials for art-making and environmental art practice. Respectfully using ancestral skills and traditional knowledge that navigates across cultures, and mainly working with garden trims or the so-called “invasive plants”, this work also aims to support local ecological restoration that fosters native ecology. Through Plants Are Teachers, she invites individuals to look for opportunities to creatively connect with their local landscape while cultivating reciprocal relationships with the land and people. Providing educational opportunities as entry points to interact with plants as teachers and more-than-human beings who carry intrinsic knowledge, Juliana invites people to explore different technologies to interrelate with the territories they inhabit for an ongoing search for relationship with the natural world.
