Iviva Olenick

Indigo dyeing at Old Stone House 

Thanks to Old Stone House & Washington Park for another year of growing colonial textile crops, cotton and indigo, and giving me space to offer free public dyeing workshops to adults and children in summer 2021. We are growing the crops as one way to acknowledge and talk about foundational enslaved labor by Africans and Native Americans, while also acknowledging that the land we occupy was taken from the Lenape.  

Below are images of adult and child participants using the salt rub method, derived from Korean and Japanese dyeing methodology, to use fresh Japanese indigo leaves and salt to dye silk fabric. This method also works with woad, a medieval indigo. 

Public programming is sponsored in part by a Greater New York Arts Development Fund grant from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by BAC (Brooklyn Arts Council).