Connection * Joy * Beauty

Welcome

the healing power of color

An invitation to the wild side…

Come explore the colorful possibilities that plants offer to us. Connecting to plants in the dye pot opens us up to a magical realm where perspectives change, and healing is possible.

Dream Bird Studio is the ongoing effort of artist and naturalist dyer Iris Sullivan Daire. Offerings include:

Naturally dyed textiles for adornment, the altar or as a talisman.
Workshops and retreats that use natural dyes as a portal to deeper relationships to self, others and the natural world. Partnering with plants in this way serves as a powerful tools for self-care and healing.
Art from the front lines of Nurture Culture.

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My Great Grandmother as a young woman in Gladwin County Michigan.
Gathering stories and finding patterns along my family lines. Family members unknown to me have done an enormous amount of work documenting our ancestors on the web. It is beyond wild to find myself named, and see the connections to branches of family that stretch generations into the past so easily.

Feeling grateful for this ease, and feeling the weight of my privilege that it is so, knowing that for many finding any information about family history is nearly impossible.
Wishing you well as we enter this season of the thinning of the veil.

#thepastdidntgoanywhere
#weareourancestors
#familylines
#ruralheritage
#samhain

October Red Tent. Himalayan knotweed, Columbia River.

After three dark and stormy days, today tilted towards blustery with periods of sun. During what we in the neighborhood refer to as a "sucker hole" I got out and made this tent. A sucker hole being those breaks in the weather that seem like you might have time to do a loop walk, but sometimes result in becoming completely drenched and hail pelted before you finish. To say the weather is dynamic here is an understatement.

There are a variety of knotweeds that have set up camp near where I live. This stand is the long narrow leaf one known as Himalayan knotweed, Persicaria wallichii. The larger leafed knotweed varieties, Japanese and Giant, are perhaps better known species. All three are in evidence around Clatsop County. Eradicating any of them is very difficult once established. Not unlike white settler groups.
I have been thinking a lot about my ancestors of late, and have started to research my family. Already I have found out new things, including that I have ancestors of European extraction who came to North America prior to the revolutionary war. Until now I had only known stories of those who arrived as a direct result of the Irish Potato Famine.
Himalayan knotweed is beautiful, fragrant, and useful as both food and medicine. Though as a listed noxious weed finding a stand that hasn't been poisoned makes it dangerous to forage.

I often think about the long term ramifications of human mobility, and the plants that follow us around. How do we navigate the way forward once we have taken root far from our native lands? Can any good come of being a non-native invasive? Whether human or plant?

This place is the ancestral home of the Clatsop - Chinook Peoples. Politics named this county after them, but fails to recognize the living modern descendents as a distinct soverign tribe. Such are the crazy times we live in.

May this Red Tent hold space for all of us. May we dream a new way forward from within it that honors what has come before.

#invasivespecies
#indigenouspeoplesday
#clatsop
#chinooknation
#installationart
#madder
#plantlessons

Seriously magical day yesterday. Spent immersed in conversation and experimentation. @seaspellfiber brought @demarinisprinting and @pigmenthunter to the studio for a bee dance of natural color possibilities and cross pollination. Scott brought up his beautifully rendered Salmon screen and mixed up a clay paste of Sandy River clay to put through it. We opened up the #communityvat brought home from Indigofest for the salmon to swim in. I need this kind of studio collaboration in my life more regularly. My heart is full and my head is still reeling.

#indigolessons
#localcolor
#collaborate
#artsaveslives
#gratitudes

Marigold dyed silk and blue skies. The color of happiness. I've saved up some summer flower loveliness for the class I'm teaching at Portland Nursery November 10th. Come dye a sunshine yellow silk to brighten your days during the coming winter darkness. 💛☀️💛☀️💛☀️💛
#capturedsummer
#flowerdyes
#goldenbliss
#altarcloth
#silksunshine
#floweroffering

The Red Tent Series

A Red Tent on the shore of Lake Quinault. Part of the series of ephemeral outdoor installations utilizing site specific sticks and a madder dyed silk. Representing the confluence of Woman and Nature, made during menstruation.