(insects chirping) (bright ambient music) - Hey, there, welcome to "Monograph."

I'm your host, Jennifer Wallace Fields.

The goldenrod is one of the first signs of autumn in the South, and it's just beginning to bloom.

This is the perfect setting for our visit today with an artist whose work is inspired by regional beauty.

We've traveled to Greensboro, Alabama to visit fiber artist, an old friend of "Monograph," Aaron Sanders Head.

He's going to show us how to use natural dyes to make one-of-a-kind fabrics, and we'll also learn about his newest endeavor in fostering community here in Greensboro.

(knuckles rapping) Yoo-hoo!

- Hey.

- Hey, Aaron.

- Come on in.

- How are you?

- Good to see you.

- Good to see you.

- Welcome to Sumac Cottage.

- I can't wait, I've heard so much about it.

- Yeah, let's look around.

- Okay.

(door creaking) Aaron, I love the progress that you've made on Sumac Cottage.

- Thank you.

- Could you kind of, like, tell us a little bit about the renovations that you've been doing?

- Yeah, we're definitely getting towards the final stages.

It's all coming together now.

When we first bought it about a year and a half ago, there was no back wall here.

- Wow.

- So it had been open to the elements for about 15 years, and then wrapped with a billboard for about eight years kind of after that.

So yeah, so we put the wall back on here, made it all watertight again, and then built a big outdoor classroom multi-use space off the back of a about 1,000 square foot deck.

- Wow, that's really incredible, and I love what's happening with the ceilings.

There's like, it seems to be, like, multiple roof lines.

- Definitely.

So it was really important to us that it obviously was an existing building, and it was two buildings put together, and it was important to us to be able to show that history in some way while still bringing it up to some sort of modern time.

So there's a couple of roof lines you can see up here, and in one part, you can even see the exterior of one of the buildings that got put together to make the larger building.

So yeah, I like being able to see the history of the space, but while still being able to bring new life to it at the same time.

- Yeah, and I feel like your work really vibes with the space, like I can see like all of the different elements, like, coming together.

- Right.

- Can you tell us a little bit about some of your pieces that you have here?

- Yeah, so all of my textile work is grounded in, usually, in some kind of traditional textile mode, so it could be a traditional quilt block, or like, letter quilts, like the one you see here.

So I like to kind of take some traditional mode of thinking with textiles or quilt making, and then spin it in some way, so playing with scale, or playing with color, or playing with the fabric itself.

So a lot of the material is domestic textiles, things like dish towels, and sheets, and clothing, and things that have been overdyed, to give them a new life, and to add to that history they already had before.

- Yeah, and what types of dyes are you using on these pieces?

- So all the colors that you see are natural dyes of some kind, meaning they come from a plant source.

So the blue you see is indigo, the tans and browns are usually gonna be, like, black walnut, there's things like sumac, goldenrod, madder, all kinds of different natural sources that either grow here in Greensboro or I forage around the county in different places.

- I love that, it's so beautiful.

- Thank you.

So these are some of the things that have been used to make some of the colors that you see in my work.

Yeah, this here is the namesake of the cottage, it's sumac.

This part of the plant will give you a red color.

Other parts of it will give you different colors as well.

So the leaves give you more of, like, a silver color, even kind of purplish sometimes, if you play with the pH.

One of the reasons why I wanted to name it Sumac Cottage is that I love the history of using all parts of the plant for different purposes, and I love to be able to use the cottage and the land around it for as many different things as I can use it for, and use it as well as I can, so that was really the inspiration behind the name as well.

- Oh, I love that.

- And indigo is what gives you the beautiful blues that you think of in, like, denim, and more traditional uses like that, and then buckthorns give you kind of a yellowish-gold tone.

So there's a different kind of array of different colors that you can combine, you can modify, to get a pretty full palette just from your surroundings and things you can grow, or things you can forage around where we live here in West Alabama.

And so, I'd love to show you outside where we had some things set up to get some dyeing done.

- Yes, I'm so excited.

(bright ambient music) As a multimedia artist, Merrilee Challiss explores how art can deepen our understanding of the interconnectedness of all things, nature, other species, and each other through her meditative process.

- My favorite part of being an artist is that magic is real, and making art is making magic.

(birds singing) (ambient music continues) I was sort of that loner kid that just was always drawing, and that hasn't stopped, I'm still doing it now.

(bright ambient music continues) I had this revelation at one point because of Sea-Monkeys (chuckles) in the fourth grade.

I sort of tapped into that gnostic worldview of worlds within worlds.

I was obsessed with fairy lore and fairytales, and I drew dragons and fairies, and I would sort of cultivate that time spent daydreaming.

(bright ambient music continues) My artistic practice is very multidisciplinary.

I'm very creatively restless, and I like to move from one genre, one material, one system to another.

I see things that I do now that I did 10 years ago or maybe 20 years ago, I may not do it for 10 more years, but I see the through line, so I feel like being an artist is a long game where your, you know, your thoughts and visions, you're broadcasting them out deep into the future, connecting with realms that are not the ones that you're experiencing now.

So I have one foot, like, firmly planted in the here and now, and the rational waking consciousness that we're all living in, and then I have one foot planted in this other world, and that sustains me, and it's like, I know it exists, I've seen it, but we only glimpse it occasionally, but it's enough to kind of keep you in that state of wonder, and always wanting to go back there.

(bright ambient music continues) I mean, why be limited?

You know, I think you should explore as much as you can.

Making art is a process, and it's, to me, it's tied into that alchemical process that we are engaged in as human beings of refining ourselves over the course of decades.

It also reinforces those connections to, you know, the more esoteric things that I'm interested in.

The symbol systems that I use and the imagery that I use, those things sort of filter up from our collective consciousness, and it, you know, arises in different cultures, and so of course, the eye is one, and the hand is one, so they have really deep roots.

And I think, as humans, those symbols are so innate to just our humanness.

I mean, part of how we've evolved is being able to create symbols that are universally understood, which is so interesting to me.

(bright ambient music continues) It is my meditation, it is my prayer, it is my spiritual practice, and it's helped me understand who I am, and how I operate in the world.

The work became the spiritual practice, because it, in itself, was very tedious and laborious, and caused me to slow down.

So I would find myself with tweezers in hand, and a sequin, and then, you know, I'd pause and take a breath, and then think of, you know, have a moment of prayer for myself, for the world, for all the sentient beings of the world, and so that sort of manifested into the work in a more profound way.

(bright ambient music continues) Do I make art for the process or for the object?

You know, I'd say it's both, but it's not an even split.

So I feel like when I'm making art, I'm actually channeling energy, like that's part of the process of self-discovery and wonder that you are engaging with.

So it's that dance between being able to let yourself live in that sort of swimmy world of potential before anything has to be actualized, which is totally an alchemical process, and then you have to produce (chuckles) the material, right, at the end of it, which I also love.

I think that's the part of the magic.

You start out with an idea, something doesn't exist, and then you produce it, and then it's out there in the world.

How is that not magic?

(bright ambient music continues) Human beings are innately creative and curious beings, and we all have been sort of taught that we're not allowed to do that once we become an adult, or once we're told by somebody with a limiting voice, and it's such a disappointment, because having that connection with our creativity, no matter what you do and who you are, is gonna serve you throughout your whole life.

So everybody needs to get into their artistic practice.

(bright ambient music continues) (rhythmic ambient music) (rhythmic ambient music continues) - So Aaron, (insects chirping) what are we gonna get started with today?

- Okay, so we're gonna start off looking at some indigo dyeing, and the indigo technique that I use, this is an iron vat.

So we're working with powdered indigo from indigo that I grew here in Greensboro.

- [Jennifer] Wow.

- It's a Japanese indigo plant.

It grows really well in this really hot climate here, and you get these really beautiful, nice, dark blues on cotton and linen from it.

- [Jennifer] And then how do these patterns, how do you get the patterns to show up?

- Yeah, so there's tons of different resist techniques that exist across the world, really.

Shibori is a popular one, it's a Japanese technique, but there's all kinds, they call it a manual resist technique.

So it's different ways of binding the fabric, and then putting things on it, like rubber bands, or clothespins, or shaped, or something like that to resist the dye once you dip it in.

- Can you show me how to do one?

- Yeah, I'd love to.

Okay, so the cool thing about these manual techniques is that they're really simple, and little slight twists and turns that you do will give you a totally different pattern, but usually, you start off by folding it.

So if you fold the fabric, whatever you do to it, it's gonna repeat itself.

It's gonna happen here, it's also gonna happen on the other side, too.

- Okay.

- So we'll fold it, that's just into quarters there, and I have these circles here.

So we'll take this and we'll just put it kind of on the...

This is the middle of our fabric here.

We'll put it right here.

And then you use things like rubber bands or clothespins, or these clamps work great to give you a nice, you know, it holds those pieces together nicely that way.

We're just gonna add a couple more things on here really quick.

I think these little clothespins are fun to add, because- - I wanna do, can I do this side?

- Yeah, definitely.

So where the clothespin closes, there's a little square, so you get these nice, small squares from the clothespins.

And we'll do one more really quickly, as well.

I'm just gonna roll it up into a tube here.

- Where did you learn how to do different folds, or do you ever just make 'em up, or see what happens?

- Yeah.

You can definitely find, you know, patterns that have been used historically in different regions.

They often match the landscape of the region they were used in.

I think it's really kind of romantic and beautiful, so I like to kind of take those techniques, and then twist them in a sort of a way to get a slightly different approach to it that might look more like West Alabama, so more, like, open kind of circles for the catfish ponds we have here, - Aw.

- And maybe even mounds, we have a Moundville, - Okay.

- So kind of using those techniques to look like what we have around here, as well.

- [Jennifer] I love that so much.

- Let's just roll it up into a little tube here.

- Okay.

- I'm just gonna put more of those clothespins around it there.

You wanna look at the indigo now?

(Aaron chuckling) - Yes.

- [Aaron] Okay, so the cool thing about indigo is people think of indigo as being this, you know, beautiful blue color.

When you first pull it out of the indigo vat, it actually is a green color, and it turns blue as it hits the air.

It's called oxidizing.

So it's kind of fun, you feel even more like a magician, or an alchemist, (Jennifer laughing) watching that kind of thing happen.

(Aaron chuckling) - Yeah.

- And we'll see that it's this kind of toxic waste green color.

- [Jennifer] Yeah.

- And we're happy about that, that's good.

So it's gonna slowly turn to a nice blue.

- [Jennifer] And then how long do these, do they need to rest before we can- - Yeah, so you really just let them sit until it turns blue, and you can go back in for a second and third dip, if we'd like to, at that point.

- [Jennifer] Okay.

- [Aaron] Okay, so we're gonna move on and look at some goldenrod dyeing, now.

- This yellow color is gorgeous.

- Isn't it?

- Yes.

- Yeah, yellow is a color that you find a lot with natural dyes, from the kind of more, like, bright daisy colors, to sunshiny, to more buttery tones, too, but I just love the color that you get from goldenrod.

It's one of my favorite colors.

- I mean, it's almost like a literal translation.

It doesn't really change that much.

- Yeah, you really feel like... That's the thing about natural dyes that I find so appealing is that it's really a chance to engage with your environment in a whole different way, and you're able to see your surroundings as much more of a source of beauty versus just these flowers you might see on the side of the road.

So it's a whole different way of viewing your environment in a more generous way, I think.

- Yeah.

- You can see it really directly - Yeah.

- With those two.

- Okay, so what is the process of turning this flower into a dye?

- So with goldenrod, it's really thinking about what part of the plant's giving you the most color, and with this, it's these bright yellow blooms that we see, so you wanna get it down to being more of just the flower versus the whole stem.

So for this, all you'll do is you'll take some scissors, and you can just snip it (scissors snipping) to get down to more just that flower, and you can put it into a pot.

This is just a pot of water that we have right here.

You wanna help me snip it down some?

- [Jennifer] I would love to.

- [Aaron] I'll give you some over here.

- [Jennifer] Thank you.

- People make tea from goldenrod, as well, so you know, - Are there any- - It's a medicinal plant.

- [Jennifer] What are the health benefits of goldenrod tea?

- So the funny thing, (scissors snipping) one of the funny things about it is that, you know, it often gets blamed for being this this awful, you know, allergy-causer, but the tea can really help with your allergies (scissors snipping) as an antihistamine, as well.

- Oh wow.

- Okay, so let's put some fabric into the goldenrod dye.

We'll put it in there, and then we'll let it heat up.

We'll slowly heat it up to a simmer, and then we'll watch it.

It usually takes about an hour or so, and we'll just watch until it gets the color that we want it to be.

- Great.

- Okay, let's go put this on the stove.

- Okay.

(bright ambient music) - Birmingham-based artist, educator, and frequent collaborator with Aaron, Doug Baulos, is a talented artist whose layered and ethereal work reveals the natural beauty and mysterious corners of the Southern landscape.

(bright ambient music) - My work is kind of between death and life, between art and science, between magic and realism.

I don't think I could make my work in other places than Alabama.

My name is Douglas Pierre Baulos.

I use they/them pronouns.

I am a professor at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, and an artist that has lived here for about 45 years.

People wonder, "Why did you stay in Birmingham this whole time?"

And I think they think it's just my professor gig, but like, I chose to be here, and it is mostly because of the biodiversity of Alabama, but also because I have this amazing community of friends and other artists that really uplift my practice.

There are so many amazing artists in Alabama.

It's like, mind-boggling.

I've been a collaborative person my entire life, but the reason I'm so interested in it now is that I think we need it now more than ever.

I collaborate with, like, artists that show nationally and internationally, but I also collaborate with homeless people.

I collaborate with all kinds of communities.

I have a general world that I don't like to show artwork that's over five years old, so like, I have to stay in production.

I remember a moment in my studio about 20 years ago, and I was thinking about how a caterpillar becomes a moth, and totally changes, right?

Even chemically, and I was so interested.

I was like, "Doug, if you really want to push your work, and you want it to be not just people saying, like, 'Oh, you can really draw, you can really do this,' if you want to have them, like, a huge feeling in your installations, you're going to have to be a caterpillar, and you're gonna have to melt everything you thought, burn it to the ground, and start over," and I did.

I make, like, very elaborate sketchbooks, but I destroy them every time I'm done with one, but what I do is I go back and I pull out the pages, or the things that I think are still applicable.

If there's something that I feel still has a real strong sustain, I'll move it forward in my practice.

If not, then I either sell it, or literally break it down, like the moth, you know, in a chrysalis.

(bright ambient music) I really honor what came before me.

For thousands and thousands of years, the human evolution of trying things, which is so powerful.

I've had to develop, like, skills with, like, natural dyes, and get into actual pigment-making instead of using, like, chemicals, or the way other people do it.

Not all art venues are safe spaces, you know?

And so, like, me being immersive in that, and kind of using, like, found objects or things that aren't typical of Western art history, it allows me to create, like, a unique dialogue with the viewer that's also very founded in Alabama.

I'm much more interested in the viewer than I am in myself making the work.

Sometimes the people will be like, "Can we rearrange it so it doesn't have that part?"

And I know artists would usually freak out, but that doesn't bother me at all, it is like the viewer's way of negotiating it.

(bright ambient music continues) But I don't like to silo myself, because, like, my life has always been complicated for various reasons, and I want my work to have a lot of different materials and a lot of processes that are really aligned with my biographical chronology, even though I don't want my work to be autobiographical.

As a queer person in Alabama, like, I wanna uplift all the marginalized communities, but I also want to acknowledge that melancholy.

I'm really interested in mortality.

I always have been, not in, like, a grave or a negative way, but just as a cycle of life, like I think it's amazing, and it's one of the great mysteries.

Everybody has had, like, string that got really knotted up, and I have a lot of knotted-up feelings about Alabama, but through my research, I start to unknot that, and then I pull the thread, and as I pull the thread, I'm reaching out to people to kind of show them, like, if I pulled this thread and unraveled it, you can, too.

(bright ambient music continues) This idea that I can have, like, an alchemical, complicated practice with very grounded materials because of Alabama being what it is, that's like a real gravity for me, and it keeps me moving forward.

I feel like I have enough inspiration in Alabama to last me a lifetime.

(bright ambient music) (bright ambient music continues) - Aaron, I am dying to see (insects chirping) how everything turned out.

- Well, do you wanna start with the indigo, or with the goldenrod?

- Let's do indigo.

- Okay.

(lid scraping) Yeah, so we've had these, our bundles here, and you can see they're that nice, dark blue versus that... - It's changed a lot.

- And if you look in the middle, you can see that there's dye down the middle, too, which is what we're going for.

- [Jennifer] Mm-hmm.

- And this one's the same over here.

Okay, so you wanna see what we did?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- [Jennifer] let me help.

- You see we have some nice squares left behind by those clothespins, and then we'll take the circle off, too.

See, you see this nice kind of a quarter circle there - Wow, yeah.

- From putting it on there.

- But when we open it up, we have that nice (Jennifer gasping) repeated pattern there.

- Oh, I love that.

- Yeah.

- Oh my god.

- And so, again, really basic (hands clapping) materials, you know?

A whole way of creating patterns on fabric.

- It really does feel like magic.

- [Aaron] Okay, let's try this one, too.

- Okay.

- So this is just the clothespins here.

This is probably gonna be a little bit more abstract, maybe, than that one is.

Let's see what we get here.

- [Jennifer] Wow.

- [Aaron] So we had this kind of ombre, 'cause we rolled it up - Yeah.

- Into a tube, you know?

And all those nice, little, almost like zipper teeth kind of from the clothespins.

- Wow, and that will stay with the variation?

That won't continue to change?

- It's all the little green parts will definitely turn to be a darker blue, but yeah, that varigation will stay.

- That's beautiful.

- So we have our blue there from the indigo.

- Okay, - Now, let's go over to see how our goldenrod turned out.

- [Jennifer] Yeah.

- So it's been simmering for a while, you know.

You wanna do at least for an hour.

The longer you do it, the darker, usually, it's gonna get.

So if you can let us sit overnight, that's amazing, but, you know, (lid clanking) as much time as you can wait to, you know, your patience will allow.

(Aaron chuckling) - Ooh, and I can smell it.

Like, it smells- - Yeah, so it does have a really earthy smell.

I think it smells really good.

- I do too, it's very fragrant.

- Yeah, and you can imagine, like, when you make the tea, it has that same, it's kind of a calming, I feel like, kind of - Yeah.

- A calming, grounding scent.

Okay, so you can see, if you look at the goldenrod itself, you can see it looks a little bit more, like, spent, kinda.

You know, it looks a little like the color's been wrung out of it, and that's what's happened, so we can look at this beautiful cotton now.

- Wow.

- [Aaron] Isn't that nice?

- [Jennifer] That is lovely.

- It's like, such a sunshiny, kind of like, earthy sunshine color, (tongs clattering) I feel like.

Let me get it out, this one.

- It's so vibrant.

- Thank you.

Yeah, and I love that little bit of, like, unevenness towards the middle.

It looks like that texture of almost like a sunset, kinda.

- [Jennifer] Definitely.

- Okay, so that's a cotton there, I have a piece of linen.

Linen tends to suck up the dye a bit more to get more darker color sometimes, so this is more of like a... - Oh wow.

- And it had, like, the slightest, like, kind of beige tones of linen already, but it definitely gets a bit darker, more of like a- - It's almost like a mustard.

- Yeah.

So everything's gonna dry a little bit lighter.

They tend to dry about two shades lighter or so, but yeah, I love playing with different fabrics, vintage fabrics, new fabrics, secondhand things, and seeing how they take dye differently is one of my favorite parts of it.

- Every one is unique.

- Yeah, exactly.

(both chuckling) - We've really enjoyed our time here today, and this is such a beautiful space to experiment.

Like, what are your future plans for the cottage?

- Yeah, it was important to me for it to be a space that I could create things, but also a space for people in the community to make things, people also to travel in to make things, as well, from other places.

So I'll be hosting workshops, of course, the natural dyeing and different textile techniques, but we'll have visiting artists of all different media, things from kudzu basket weaving to different kind of, like, anthotype and cyanotype techniques, to metalsmithing, so all kinds of different techniques here.

And the goal is that it's a place people can come and learn just to express themselves a bit more freely, and feel they have a a space to really go and learn new things, and learn new ways of engaging with their environment in more artistic ways, as well, and we'd love to welcome people from all over to the workshops that we're gonna be having here.

- Awesome.

- Thank you so much for being here.

It's been so fun to show you around, and let you see some of the world of natural dyes that we have here in West Alabama.

- Well, thank you for having us, and for sharing a little bit of your magic, and for creating this beautiful community.

- Thank you.

(bright ambient music) (bright ambient music continues)