Black Walnut Trees (Studies)
1224 W Loyola Ave, Chicago IL
July 15, 2025 - July 20, 2025
Community Dye Pot and Leaf Meditation Friday, July 18 from 5-8 PM
Open Hours Sunday, July 20 from 5-8 PM and by appointment
Dye pots will be made with black walnut hulls and bark, dyeing unmordanted, natural fibers rich browns and lush blacks. Some cotton textiles will be available for you to use, but feel free to bring your own cotton, silk, or wool to dye your own bandanas, t-shirts, and more. Since this is a communal dye pot, please do not bring very large garments like pants and dresses so that there is enough dye for everyone. 🌳
During this week-long pop-up, Mari Miller will be collaborating with neighbors to create chromatograms, offering a community dye pot, and expanding a study of Black Walnut Trees on Rosemont Avenue.
Mari Miller (they/she) is a Eurasian Toisanese maker from Chicago. They believe that art, craft, and design are colonial constructs; all creative work is valid, with no one type inherently worth more than another. Though they were formally educated in art and design, Mari credits their early creative education to watching their grandmother invent small things to make her everyday life easier. As an experimental maker, Mari’s work is interdisciplinary, often combining creative processes with science and history. She is interested in experimentation and illuminating the poetic similarities between disciplines. Recurring themes include: DIY as a source of empowerment, the environment, fiber-based crafts, and food. While Mari has worked in a range of media, their recent work has focused on connecting to nature via citizen science. Inspired by Indigenous ways of relating to the world, she uses soil chromatography and cyanotypes to illuminate the spirit, or qi, of the land. Their primary inspiration has been Indigenous Chinese farming and tea culture, as well as Asian animism.
Black Walnut Trees (Studies) is a part of Navigations, a series of artist projects in and about public space.