Artist to Artist Workshops
Extraction, Color, Trade: Fabric Dyeing Workshop
Ages 18 and up
September 28–October 26, 2026
6–8pm, Mondays
Image Credit: Megumi Shauna Arai
Instructor
Megumi Shauna Arai
Pricing
Tiered Pricing: $45, $120, $220, or $320 + $30 registration fee
Dates
28 September - 26 October (No class 12 October)
Textiles and dyes made from natural materials have a long history connected to trade, oppression, and colonial extraction. Today, craft and color are often discussed without this history. This course looks at the social, political, and economic stories behind four dye materials: Haematoxylum campechianum (logwood), Isatis tinctoria (woad), cochineal, and kakishibu (persimmon tannin). Each week, students will dye fabric with one of these materials while tracing its history and the trade routes that spread it around the world.
This course will be held in person at the Abrons Arts Center. All courses will gather on Friday October 30 for a culminating share out.
For a longer course description, please visit The School of Making Thinking’s page.
About Megumi Shauna Arai
Megumi Shauna Arai is an interdisciplinary artist interested in radical and collaborative pedagogy. She has facilitated long term community projects using textile as methodology to examine fragmentation, exchange and transformation. She has hosted weekly gatherings for a group of Asian American elders in the East Village to encourage social engagement and dexterity through the format of a quilting circle. She has taught with Yto Barrada at her eco-feminist color laboratory in Tangier, Morocco, foraging plants from the land and creating color, while investigating the social, political and cultural histories of the dye material.
About
Extraction, Color, Trade is presented as part of Artist to Artist: a class series by Abrons Arts Center and The School of Making Thinking.