Rural Utopias Residency: Mike Bianco in Pingelly #2, Darcy Palladino and Natural Dyeing

Mike Bianco is currently working with the community of Pingelly, in a six-month residency. This work forms part of one of Spaced’s current program, Rural Utopias.

Mike’s art practice is invested in socially engaged art, and focuses on the politics of ecology, sustainability, and the impending “century of crisis.” Bianco has conducted extensive research in the field of gastroecology, and the intersection of food, craft, and sustainability, in locations that range from Oaxaca, Mexico, to Fukushima, Japan. Bianco exhibits his work internationally, and has been featured in venues that range from the Kenpoku Art Festival in Ibaraki, Japan, to the Science Gallery in London, England.

Here, Mike shares his second update from Pingelly.

One of the key components of my project resides within the utopian ideal that a Social Practice artist can use their work as a platform for other artists to engage communities. I am attempting to do this by inviting other artists and craftspeople top present eco-minded workshops to the community of Pingelly. The first of these workshops was led by Darcy Palladino.

I first met Darcy a year ago on Instagram as I was looking for help in creating garments for my 2020 Adelaide Biennial project Anthrocomb. A purse that Darcy had made for her cousin (a talented carpenter) came up in my feed, and I was instantly taken with Darcy’s use of materials and her sensibilities for composition. I asked if Darcy might be interested in working with me to help construct the garments I needed for my biennial project, and we arranged a time to meet. To be honest, the first time I met Darcy was shocked. Based on what I had seen, I had expected to meet an older artisan with a well-established studio.  Thus, at our first meeting I was greatly surprised to meet a woman in her early 20s, working out of a small bedroom in her parent’s house, who was completely dedicated to finding her own way in craft. Darcy explained then, that while she had been sewing from a very young age, she had only recently begun expanding her work and making it more broadly available to the public. As such, our work for the biennial would present itself as a major professional step up, and would offer a meaningful challenge for her as an emerging artist. A year later, and I have found Darcy to be the most important mentee I have ever had the pleasure to work with, and I have seen her grown professionally in ways that I rarely see people do without extensive graduate work. Hence, when I knew I would be developing this program with IAS, I always thought that my project could serve as an important platform for Darcy as an emerging artist.

I have long been interested in natural dying as an element of the work I produce, and was interested in including a naturally dyed item into my performance for Anthrocomb. Darcy, curious about the process, asked if she could join in a “teach-ourselves” workshop that I had organized amongst friends. While most of us had a fun time boiling up plants and dunking different fabrics into baths, Darcy left that day deeply inspired. Within weeks, Darcy had filled an entire notebook with small samples from a large number of different plants. Where most people would have been frustrated by failed experiments, Darcy’s passion for sustainable textiles drove her to preserve, eventually leading her to develop an exciting array of plant-based fabric dyes within a couple months. As a result, it seemed natural to invite Darcy to lead a workshop ion natural dyeing. As a mentor, I was also interested in offering Darcy an opportunity to develop her abilities to lead a workshop, knowing that this would be a great time for her to try out her public speaking, pamphlet writing, and community engagement abilities.

For the workshop, roughly twenty people gathered at the Pingelly PRAC to attend Darcy’s workshop. Over the course of three hours, Darcy shared her work, cracked, jokes, and beautifully taught the community how to dye fabrics with plants from their backyard. Darcy selected a number of materials to work with, including turmeric and avocado pits, and Wandoo bark and lichen sourced from the UWA Future Farm. The results were outstanding, and everyone left the workshop feeling empowered. Over the course of several weeks following the workshop, I received a number of notes from participants exclaiming how inspired and excited they were for natural dying, many of whom claimed that the workshop had reconnected them to crafting practices they had long ignored. As for myself, I was incredibly impressed with Darcy’s teaching, and could barely believe that she had never led a workshop before. Since the workshop in August, Darcy has gone on to lead a number of natural dyeing workshops throughout WA, and many of the participants have turned to natural dyeing as new elements of their practice.

As a Social Practice Artist, I often measure the quality of my work, not by how recognized I might be, but how recognized others are, and how the quality of others’ lives may have been improved. In the case of the natural dyeing workshop, it feels good to know that there is a new and talented eco-minded educator in the world, and a community of crafters dedicated to making their work in sustainable ways. That anyone should ever remember that I was a part of their journey is of little significance to me – the work of the world is always collective.

-Mike Bianco