Bios of Instructor and Workshop Organizers
Michele Wipplinger, founder and President of Seattle-based Earthues, Inc., an international color and design consulting company specializing in ecology and the artisan. Michele has over 34 years of international experience in the field of natural design and ecological processes (with an emphasis on natural dyes). She has authored two books: “Natural Dyes for Artisans of the Americas” and “Color Trends” (a book on dyes, color and design for textiles). She lectures worldwide and creates a limited line of hand painted silk shawls with natural plant dyes. She has consulted on numerous projects around the world for both government and private organizations. The endless range of subtle, sophisticated colors she produces with all natural plant and mineral combinations serves as her curriculum vitae. She can tell you where she first made each combination, what culture her recipe is most influenced by, what the color means in several different regions, the challenges of making a dependable color with the particular plant material required – and so on. Her artisan-specific trend forecasting, the memorable training protocol she uses when on the road in faraway places, and her mastery of her craft, are each remarkable and unique. See www.earthues.com
Docey Lewis, a commercial and fair trade textile designer and owner of Design Bank 505 in New Harmony, has worked in forty countries as Senior Textile Consultant for Aid to Artisans and the US State Department. She is the founder of Handmade Water, a global artisan effluent treatment project for low impact and vegetable dyes (funded by the Hunter Douglas Charitable Endowment), and she developed the eBay Foundation partnership with Aid to Artisans for the Artisan Health & Safety Manual. Docey and her son Owen are partners in a weaving and papermaking workshop employing over 500 artisans and cottage industry workers in Nepal. They manufacture handmade wall coverings and fabrics licensed to international distributors through to-the-trade showrooms. Her work has won numerous awards, most recently Interior Design’s Best of Year Award in 2010 for 3form’s Full Circle translucent ecoresin panels. Docey is on the boards of the HandEye Fund and Vital Edge Aid, non-profit organizations that work globally with artisans. Docey and Michele have collaborated through Aid to Artisans for many years, most recently on natural dye training in Senegal.
LFN Textiles is the design studio of Laura Foster Nicholson, a textile artist known for hand-woven brocaded tapestries. Educated at Kansas City Art Institute (BFA) and Cranbrook Academy of Art (MFA), she has lectured, taught classes and workshops, and exhibited extensively in the US, Canada and Italy. Grants and awards include an NEA fellowship, the Leone di Pietra prize at the 1985 Venice Biennale of Architecture, three Illinois Arts Council fellowships, and a grant from the Graham Foundation for Research in the Fine Arts. She owns LFNTextiles, which designs jacquard ribbon, custom upholstery and drapery fabrics. She has licensed designs to Crate & Barrel, Land of Nod, Grow Kids, Renaissance Ribbons, and Larsen, Inc. for production. Laura Foster Nicholson’s tapestries are found in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, The Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, The Archives of the Venice Biennale, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Denver Art Museum, The Racine Art Museum, The Reading Public Museum, The Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum and many private and corporate art collections nationwide. Laura served on the board of directors of the Textile Arts Center in Chicago which sponsored workshops and exhibitions including those of Michele Wipplinger.
