Please join us for a Q&A with Indigo artist Rowland Ricketts.

Internationally renowned textile artist Rowland Ricketts uses natural dyes and historical processes to create contemporary textiles that span art and design. Trained in indigo farming and dyeing in Japan, he received his M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2005 and is currently an associate professor in Textiles at Indiana University. His work has been exhibited at the Textile Museum (Washington, D.C.), Cavin-Morris Gallery (New York), and Douglas Dawson Gallery (Chicago) and has been published in Textiles Now, Fiber Arts, Selvedge, Surface Design Journal, and Hand/Eye Magazine. Rowland is a recipient of a 2012 United States Artists Fellowship.

Natural Indigo Then and Now

In this presentation, I will discuss my work growing, processing, and dyeing with indigo within the context of this dye's global history. Special emphasis will be placed on how the legacy of colonialism and capitalist definitions of value have shaped the way we favor some indigo traditions while disregarding others, and why these overlooked indigo systems of making offer profound opportunities for re-thinking what we truly value.

The keynote is available here: http://www.naturaldyeconference.ca/symposium-two/keynote/