“Kayla Powers - Interwoven: The Art of FLOURISHING Together”

 

Textile artist, Kayla Powers, talked about the themes, ideas, and inspiration of her current exhibition, Flourish, at the Saugatuck Center for the Arts. She shared photos and videos of the process of foraging for plants, crafting natural dyes, and hand sewing the various pieces in this show. Kayla  highlighted the individual works including Sowing Seeds, A Galaxy of Wildflowers, and A Long Walk Through the North End. We had lots of questions and she was very gracious in answering them.

Sowing Seeds

Many of us participated in her collaborative community-created seed sewing-sowing project.  Kayla was hoping for about 400 seed pods, she received over 1700, many from other countries and states. We all got to take a seed home with us. 

Flourish

Kayla explained how the flowers in this exhibit are all local wildflowers this region in Michigan. From her handout: "It's a series I made to showcase some of the biodiversity here in this beautiful region of the world.  I started by researching the flowers. Then I would sketch them, paying close attention to the shapes of the petals and any other unique characteristics of the flowers.  Then I would dye fabric and yarn to match the colors as closely as possible.  It was almost like a puzzle, to create the shapes and fit them together. The flowers are like little quilts with backing fabric, cotton batting in between and then the dyed fabric on top.  They are primarily hand stitched.  I see them almost as portraits."

She took a photograph and then had that printed onto fabric.
She used the company Contrado.  Spoonflower also does it.

We had a lot of fun examing this piece and asking Kayla
how she made several of the blocks.