Petaluma artist uses nature as her medium

Karen Hess has always been inspired by the landscape.

She grew up among the grassy hills and oak woodlands of Chileno Valley, spending hours playing on San Antonio creek. At age 9, her mother bought her a spinning wheel and she learned how to spin yarn out of wool from her neighbor’s sheep. At the time, she didn’t give it a second thought - using the products of her environment to make the things she needed made sense in a very basic way. This concept is literally woven into the fabric of her childhood.

“I’ve always been influenced by how I feel about the landscape. These aren’t just some hills, they’re my history,” she said.

Eventually, Hess ventured outside of her hometown landscape and, at 18, she spent a “life-changing” four months in Paris. She immersed herself in new experiences, visiting museums and learning about art and new cultures. But she was struck by a familiar theme: people in other cultures made art and clothing that were very specific to their place. For example, if they lived in cold weather and raised yak, their clothes were made from yak fur. And the great artists, like Cezanne, used colors that were derived from natural ingredients around them. In one way, she said, these people were limited by what they could find in their natural landscapes, but, at the same time, these limits forced them to be creative.

“They were pulling it all out of the place itself,” she said. “Textiles used to reflect that.”

She realized that this is also how it used to be in Sonoma County, too. Native Americans and, later, pioneer families, completely relied on the materials in their environment to produce their basic needs like food and clothing.

It’s been more than 20 years since Hess’ trip to Paris, but she is still inspired by these same ideas, and recently, the 46-year-old learned how to make natural dyes for textiles, like wool, silk and linen from plants grown in her beloved Petaluma landscape.

On any given day at her comfortable, quirky West Petaluma home, there is a dye pot brewing with iron bark eucalyptus leaves she gathered from the tree down the street to make a brown, orange or rust colored dye, or Jack-o-latern mushrooms she foraged for purple dye, or a jar with fermenting lichen that produces a burgundy or pink color. She also uses flowers, such as hollyhocks for pink or green, or coreopsis for a vibrant golden color. And, she said, almost anything can be experimented with, like redwood seeds, oxalis and fennel. While the colors take better to animal fibers like wool or alpaca, they also show up creatively in other fabrics, like cotton or hemp. The final outcome depends on how long the fabric is soaked in the dye, what kinds of additives or fixative or mordant you’ve added (Hess uses ammonia and, as a mordant, oak galls).

She has also started growing some of her own dye plants including the ancient dye plant weld, which produces a bright yellow.

“I have no vegetables in my garden,” she said, “only weird plants.”

The seeds for one of those plants - indigo whose leaves magically produce a deep blue when processed - came from Hess’ community as well. She is part of the local Fibershed - an organization started by Rebecca Burgess that has become a national movement. Guided by the principal that fiber systems, like food, can be locally and sustainably produced, the Fibershed is helping create an “international system of regional textile communities” that connects farmers and ranchers who raise animals or grow plants for fiber with textile craftspeople and artisans.

Marie Hoff of the Northern California Fibershed works with about 80 producers and 30 designers in Marin, Sonoma, Napa, Solano and Yolo counties. She also manages sheep and cattle at Chanslor Ranch in Bodega Bay. Hoff explained that designers like Hess who use local natural dyes and make clothes from local fibers are a key part of the Fibershed’s deep commitment to create a “village” that provides all the things you need to survive.

“Having a connection with your local artisan gives you a pretty direct and felt connection with your local landscape,” she said. “That’s the real deal.”

Even more than that, supporting a local fibershed has greater implications for the environment and society as a whole, Hoff said. Over three million pounds of wool are grown in California every year, but very little of it is processed here, she explained.

“Some of it is literally thrown away, buried in ground or sent to landfills,” she said. “The bulk majority of it is actually sold at an extremely low auction rate price that leaves the wool grower with very low profit, but most goes to China to be processed.”

Hoff said most clothing material is processed with heavy chemicals, mixed with plastics and dyed with synthetic dyes. And when these clothes are washed, these microfilaments enter our water and soil.

As soon as these materials leave the country, the connection to the landscape and the supply chain are lost and local economies lose out on what could potentially be a multi-million dollar industry.

But there are ways to avoid this “industrial apparel and materials complex.” The Fibershed has helped support two local wool mills in the area and is working with their producers to implement soil carbon building practices with a “Climate Beneficial Certification” for raw fibers that come from local landscapes.

Like the local sustainable food movement has done, Fibershed members and supporters aim to expand their movement out of its “cult” following and make it more mainstream. Hoff strongly believes that if people who are interested in living sustainably are given an opportunity to support a locally produced clothing, they will jump on it.

“Your general person who wants to shop for groceries at the farmer’s market, I think they are looking for that equivalent for their clothing,” she said.

Hess also believes that the dyes and clothing she produces directly fit into the increasing desire for a local sustainable lifestyle, adding that the stories behind how food got to your plate or how clothes got to your closet play an important role in consumers’ decision making.

To this end, she has started documenting her dyeing process and selling some of the clothing she designs and creates. Her photographs of colorful other-worldly dye pots printed on delicate sheets of metal have appeared in three art shows around Petaluma in the past six months, including the small works show at Aqus Cafe and a group show at the Mail Depot.

To see Karen Hess’ creations, visit www.localdialect.net and to find out more about Fibershed, go to www.fibershed.com.

(Contact Reguzzoni at argus@arguscourier.com)