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About MeI'm re-claiming indigenous cultural plant dyeing one vat at a time as a creator of unique dyed embellishments for your body and home. Fabrics include natural cotton, linen, hemp, rayon and silk. I am a writer, visual storyteller, dreamer, working traveler, Pow Wow dancer, sharing maker of objects -- dyeing cloth and stitching on the Coastal Plains and Outer Banks of Eastern North Carolina. Mixed blood Southeastern Algonquin Native American descendant from Toisnot Tuscarora, Florida Seminole and West African bloodlines.
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Links to My CV: Professional Summary | Education | Computer Skills | Grants & Awards | Teaching Experience | Presentations & Workshops | Shows & Exhibitions | International Experiences | Memberships & Professional Affiliations
About
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The Fibershed is a working studio that seeks to bring back an Algonquin natural dye garden to reconnect with the First Nations history of the land in Coastal Carolina. It comes out of promises made to my mother and two grandmothers to tell our stories of survival, love and lost while dyeing cloth and stitching. We are the children of the remnant of the Tuscarora Confederacy known as The Gatekeepers. We remained on the land so that others could escape. We survived by hiding out in plain sight after Fort Neyuheru:'ke, near present day Snow Hill, was burned to the ground at the end of the Tuscarora Wars in 1713.
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My History
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I'm a Teaching Artist from a family of teachers and women who loved sewing, quilting, dyeing cloth, rug twining, embroidery and crochet. I grew up in a multi-generational home where handmade was a way of life. I earned a BFA degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Studio Art with concentrations in Ceramic Sculpture and Painting. I have additional educational experiences at East Carolina University in Ceramics, Painting, Art Education and Textiles and graduate work at Western Carolina University and Penland School of Crafts. My teaching experiences include K-12, community college and university. I received a 2017 Summer Certificate of Completion for The Natural Dye Studio from Penland School of Crafts. The two-week class was taught by Charllotte and Sophena Kwon, renowned worldwide for reconnecting indigenous cultures with natural dyeing. They also own Maiwa, a leading source of natural dyestuffs.
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Indigenous Fashion
I'm back to stitching to honor a promise to my dying mother to share the stories of my many mothers while dyeing cloth, quilting and embroidery. In the last two years of my mother's life, she and I made bundles for dyeing cloth and recounted all her memories of natural dyeing with her mother and grandmother. "Making color on cloth," she told me describes the women in our family. Over and over Momma repeated that "dyeing fabric, sewing blankets and embellishing them with embroidery communicated our feelings, our struggles, our ups and downs, our joys, our sorrows, our loves and our broken hearts." My mother was proud of me as an artist, but this was the first and only time she asked me to use my creative hands for a specific purpose. So, I'm back where I was 50 years ago, living in the house and sleeping in the bed where I grew up, creating color on cloth using indigo, madder and marigolds, sewing indigenous fashion, dancing blankets and embellishing them with embroidery and beads. Fashion is a language and indigenous fashion is healing the wounds of 300 years of being a stranger on the land of my ancestors.
Improvisational Quilting
My quilting process is improvisational accidental piecing which is based on indigenous rural agricultural traditions of making color with flowers, nuts and plants and using any and all available fibers. I create quilt tops using hand dyed or over-dyed cotton fabric because according to my great-grandfather, it make the cloth sacred by connecting me with my ancestors. Indigo is the dominate color in my dye practice and represents 1) the waters of the Pamlico and Atlantic Ocean surrounding the Outer Banks; 2) the ever changing Carolina blue sky that still manages to take my breath away by its brilliance; and 3) The Blues and growing up on The Blues Trail in Eastern North Carolina One of my grandmothers told me a truth that sums up life, "You Don't Know What Love Is Until You Know The Meaning Of The Blues." I grew up in a musical family, where singing and piano playing was gospel and the Blues depending on the day of the week.
What It Means to be a Teaching Artist
Teaching Style: I consider myself a teaching artist. I practice a shared learning environment instead of a teacher-centered educational model. My best practices are based on traditional indigenous educational foundations developed to empower children of color growing up under Jim Crow. The goal is to empower learners to find their own voice, opinions, and vision from guided creative hands activities. I employ educational strategies to accommodate different styles of learning, provide notebooks for participants to take home, and life-time online access to my on-going research. Teaching is about a sharing exchange of knowledge. Everyone contributes regardless of age or ethnicity. It's about healing through the experiences of our creative hands.
Poo'miikapii Definition: Poo'miikapii is a Blackfoot/Algonquin traditional ways of learning concept that translates into learning, teaching, sharing and healing. In a nutshell it means we teach, we learn, we share and we heal. Rooted in traditional indigenous Textile history it gives voice to cultural, social, restorative and economic empowerment within the global modern quilting movement. Algonquin and West African people have a long connection to cloth, color, pattern, rhythm, visual texture and stitching. That connection saved our cultural heritage in Coastal Carolina. Growing natural color, binding bundles for the dye pot, dyeing fabric and stitching it into wearables and bedding embellished with beads and shells empowered the development of strong women's friendship circles. These relationships strengthened our resolve to survive the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow.
Our three-layer quilt sandwich consisted of sustainable fibers from our land and was bound with sinew and spun twines. Finished products were shawl blankets as regalia to keep us warm, as well as bed covering for warmth. The design choices of how to put the basic ingredients of making a quilt together are parallel to healing experiences of putting the broken pieces of ourselves in health. Hate makes more hate. Anger generates intolerance. Vengeance punches self. The only person we can change is reflected in a mirror. We need to collectively grow up.
As indigenous survivors we push the boundaries; we harmonize using improvisational techniques; we break the rules; we make up our own patterns or deconstruct traditional ones into something new and unexpected. Poo'miikapii as an educational model was practiced in rural Southern segregated schools as resistance to Jim Crow Anglo indoctrination. Indigenous and West African women and men educator's transferred knowledgeable life skills and cultural heritage in Booker T. Washington traditional schools built in the Coastal Plains of the Carolinas. I practice the philosophy of Poo'miikapii in all that I share with others. My Momma says, "if you share with the world, the world will share with you!" And I know beyond a shadow of doubt that my Momma's Teachings are TRUTH!
Poo'miikapii Definition: Poo'miikapii is a Blackfoot/Algonquin traditional ways of learning concept that translates into learning, teaching, sharing and healing. In a nutshell it means we teach, we learn, we share and we heal. Rooted in traditional indigenous Textile history it gives voice to cultural, social, restorative and economic empowerment within the global modern quilting movement. Algonquin and West African people have a long connection to cloth, color, pattern, rhythm, visual texture and stitching. That connection saved our cultural heritage in Coastal Carolina. Growing natural color, binding bundles for the dye pot, dyeing fabric and stitching it into wearables and bedding embellished with beads and shells empowered the development of strong women's friendship circles. These relationships strengthened our resolve to survive the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow.
Our three-layer quilt sandwich consisted of sustainable fibers from our land and was bound with sinew and spun twines. Finished products were shawl blankets as regalia to keep us warm, as well as bed covering for warmth. The design choices of how to put the basic ingredients of making a quilt together are parallel to healing experiences of putting the broken pieces of ourselves in health. Hate makes more hate. Anger generates intolerance. Vengeance punches self. The only person we can change is reflected in a mirror. We need to collectively grow up.
As indigenous survivors we push the boundaries; we harmonize using improvisational techniques; we break the rules; we make up our own patterns or deconstruct traditional ones into something new and unexpected. Poo'miikapii as an educational model was practiced in rural Southern segregated schools as resistance to Jim Crow Anglo indoctrination. Indigenous and West African women and men educator's transferred knowledgeable life skills and cultural heritage in Booker T. Washington traditional schools built in the Coastal Plains of the Carolinas. I practice the philosophy of Poo'miikapii in all that I share with others. My Momma says, "if you share with the world, the world will share with you!" And I know beyond a shadow of doubt that my Momma's Teachings are TRUTH!