Talk, Exhibition & Workshop
Community textile creation with Blue Light Junction & Oko Farms
Join the artists of Blue Light Junction (Baltimore, MD) and Oko Farms (Brooklyn, NY) to create a communal textile art piece on site at Oko Farms’ waterfront Williamsburg location. We will gather in celebration of stories, lineages, reconnections, journeys and fellowship. Surrounding ourselves in the natural environment, we will come together to learn, craft, and commune as our ancestors before have done. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about traditional ways of dyeing and creating fabric with plants while working together to collectively create something improvisational and new.
The event will start with a discussion-based panel from our textile artists. Kenya Miles of Blue Light Junction, Yemi Amu of Oko Farms, and Kenn Pan of Oko Farms (with other guests) who will share their experience, cultural practice, and new knowledge around the revitalizing field of traditional natural dye and textile production. Event participants will then receive a short instructional lecture on the traditional plants, materials, and techniques we will be using. Using the precious natural dyes and fibers grown on both of our farms, all participants will join together to make a communal textile art piece. Participants will also have the opportunity to take a small item home.
bluelightjunction.com www.okofarms.org
Founded by textile artist, farmer, and natural dyer Kenya Miles in 2020, Blue Light Junction is a natural dye studio in central Baltimore focused on growing, processing, and preserving the history of natural dyes and their artistic, practical, and commercial applications.
Founded by Yemi Amu in 2013, Oko Farms is NYC’s only publicly accessible outdoor Aquaponics Farm and Educational Center, where we grow plants and fish together sustainably in a recirculating ecosystem. In 2021, we started our Clothing Restoration Project, growing fiber and dye plants (cotton and indigo) to learn and preserve how to create textiles by hand the traditional way.