We Are Upstate NY With Fiber Artist, Writer and Teacher Katrina Rodabaugh

INSIDE+OUT is pleased to present Katrina Rodabaugh, a Hudson Valley maker, artist and writer who has long moved between mediums while staying focused on environmental issues and her love for the earth. She has helped dissolve notions of craft as prosaic while becoming a heroine of cool sustainability. As an artist, author of three books and teacher, she reminds us that working with our hands, with a focus on upcycling and mending, can gift us a visceral, deepened connection to the past and future, nature, and even other artisans. Black walnuts, Queen Anne’s lace, avocado pits, tattered quilts, pre-worn clothes: through these things which are so plentiful and often overlooked, Katrina celebrates the beauty of offering new life to commonplace materials, and locally grown and discarded items. Through timeless processes like sewing, natural plant-dyeing, mending, growing, and earth-friendly renovations of an old farmhouse, Katrina reflects that we should and can consider the earth every step of the way. Not to mention express ourselves creatively and uniquely! Read on to learn more about her journey, inspiration and how to sign up for her upcoming five-week online mending workshop. And don’t forget to stay tuned for her coveted summer retreat!

INSIDE+OUT: Where were you born and how did you wind up in the Hudson Valley?

Katrina Rodabaugh: I grew up in Western, NY, then moved to San Francisco, CA, after college, then back to Brooklyn, NY, for three years, and then back to Oakland, CA, for ten more years. I got married and had two sons, and we wanted to move back to rural NY to be closer to our families. In 2015, we bought an old farmhouse near Germantown, NY, and moved to the Hudson Valley, and we’ve been here ever since.

You are an artist and writer working across disciplines to explore environmental and social issues through craft techniques. Say more about that and how your career began.

I studied environmental studies in college and then went straight to work for nonprofit arts organizations for the next twelve years. Along the way, I earned an MFA in Creative Writing in 2007 and kept working for galleries, theaters and community arts spaces until my first son was born in 2011. My work has always been interdisciplinary–moving between text and visual arts–but in 2013, I focused on sustainable fashion and the last decade has been about this work.

For those who don’t know, what is sustainable fashion, and what does it mean to you?

It can mean anything from mending clothes, using plant dyes, prioritizing secondhand, supporting ethical makers, or just better tending the clothes you already own. It’s a broad, imperfect term that basically means considering how your wardrobe impacts the earth and trying to make choices to lessen that impact. And, for me, that also means having some fun with fiber arts along the way.

As a fiber artists, how did you find your way to the world of textiles: sewing, mending, natural dying? Do you also knit, crochet, or do any other fiber arts disciplines?

My mother was a maker. She was always sewing, knitting, quilting, gardening, baking, or working on a creative project. I’m not formally trained in fiber arts, but my training definitely started as a child at the side of her sewing machine. My work has shifted quite a bit through the decades, but I currently focus on mending, hand-stitching, plant-dyeing and redesign. I also knit and sew, but that’s just for personal use, just for fun.

You work with plants to create natural dyes for fabrics and other raw materials. Describe your process with natural dyes and why it’s important.

I work mostly with foraged plant dyes like black walnut, goldenrod, or Queen Anne’s Lace that can be harvested from our local environment. I also work with garden-grown plants like rudbeckia, marigolds and Hopi Black Dye Sunflowers. But sometimes, I also use kitchen scraps like onion skins or avocado pits. I like to use whole plants instead of powders or extracts as it deepens my relationship with the plant, helps me understand its growing cycle and offers a way to connect to my local environment or find additional uses for food scraps.

What do you love about buying and working with vintage and secondhand materials?

I love working with secondhand materials because it offers the materials another life. It honors the resources required to create the textile–the fibers, the labor, the dyes, the fuel for shipping, etc. I also love studying someone else’s handcraft, like in a vintage quilt top that was never made into a full quilt, or examining how a designer selected colors, textures and lines and how I can enter a dialogue with the original designer through my alterations.

Where do you work? Do you have a creative space of your own?

I currently work from the converted barn on our property. When we moved here in 2015, it had already been converted from a carriage house into an office space. Now, it’s my studio, laboratory and sometimes my classroom.

You’ve published three books: Mending Matters, Make Thrift Mend and The Paper Playhouse. Tell us a bit more about these themes and the inspiration behind each.

All of my books focus on ways to make crafts through the lens of sustainability. Sometimes, this means upcycling a cereal box, like in The Paper Playhouse, and sometimes, it means mending your jeans, like in Mending Matters. Sometimes, it means examining how to make your entire wardrobe more earth-friendly through mending, darning, plant-dyeing and/or upcycling textiles like in Make Thrift Mend.

You are also a poet! How does poetry connect to your work in textiles, if at all? What are some overarching themes in your poetry?

Yes, I focused on poetry when I was in graduate school. I’ve written poems and creative nonfiction all my life. Though most of my work is now very visual, at this point, focusing on fiber arts like stitching, dyeing, or considering how best to redesign our ancient farmhouse with more sustainable materials, writing is always at the heart of my work. I think of it like an attempt at creative balance–the writing occupies my brain and the visual work occupies my hands, so together, they feel better supported and balanced.

What is the biggest misconception about your work?

I think the biggest misconception is that it’s all or nothing with sustainability. That’s just not true. We can make adjustments to how we buy clothes, when we repair furniture or how we plant our gardens. While these personal choices might not be the answer to the climate crisis, they do make a difference in our personal lives and they can inspire the people around us, too. Imagine the tremendous impact if we just make one adjustment each day for 365 days.

How do you decide who to collaborate with? What drives that?

When we lived in California before we had children, my husband worked as a theater designer, and I worked in an art gallery by day, building art installations and writing poems by night. Our entire life was focused on the arts, from our day jobs to our personal art projects to how we spent our nights and weekends. All this work was inherently collaborative–theater artists understand collaboration so deeply as it’s essential to most of their work. I’d often get brought into theater projects to work as a fiber artist designing costumes or props. But the poetry community in Oakland felt like collaborators–we’d go to readings together and give feedback on each other’s work. And so my visual work just took on that collaborative spirit–my last big installation had over 30 collaborators ranging from artists to musicians, dancers and more. My work is more based on teaching and publishing now, but I still love to collaborate with other artists and writers on workshops, books and creative projects. I really appreciate the insights that collaborations can offer–the way they offer another viewpoint and mindset.

What is your ideal way to share what you do? How do future textile artists, makers and folks in general find you?

My favorite way to share my work is through my books and newsletter. I’ve engaged with various social media platforms over the past 20 years and try to stay somewhat active on Instagram and Pinterest. Still, my favorite way is through long-form writing, like in my books and newsletter and even through my classes.

You have a workshop coming up in January. Tell us about it and how to sign up.

Yes! I’m so excited about this new workshop. It’s called On the Mend, a 5-week online mending course. It’s the first time I’ve hired a videographer to film and edit my online teachings, so they are really wonderful quality–unlike me trying to hold up my mending projects when teaching on Zoom. The class is based on a series of recorded videos, but it also includes written lessons, features on other contemporary makers, creative prompts and a weekly live session for Q&A. It’s a robust course offering that includes a private community space for participants to share their work-in-progress, make friends and glean insights.

ON THE MEND: A New Visible Mending Course
January 22- February 23, 2024

An interactive, dynamic, five-week online mending course to stitch, patch, darn, and deepen your textile redesign practice with a creative community. You can learn more HERE.

What else are you working on now that you’re excited about?

I’m most excited about this upcoming workshop–I’ve been dreaming about it since my first mending book, Mending Matters, was published in 2018. But I’m also excited about other classes like an additional Creative Practice class, another summer retreat in my barn in August, and a second iteration of On the Mend because I’m already thinking about the next one. I’m excited to launch a new writing project in 2024. (All of these details will be shared through my newsletters in the coming months.) I’m excited to keep experimenting with sustainable home design and see how I can resolve the challenge of updating an old farmhouse in a way that feels the most earth-friendly, expressive and long-lasting. Oh, and I’m excited to grow more dahlias. I love growing cut flowers in my garden and dahlias have become a personal favorite.

What is it about the Hudson Valley that makes it unique to live and work here?

There’s so much I love about living in the Hudson Valley. I love the community of artists and makers, local farms, and amazing food. I also love the access to the woods, fields, lakes and the mighty Hudson River. I love the sense of space and expansiveness, particularly after living in small spaces in big cities with tiny art studios for many years. But I love how it also reminds me of where I grew up in western NY–I love knowing that my kids will have a connection to a rural landscape that wasn’t so different from the one that still occupies my memories of childhood. It’s amazing to have fields of goldenrod swathed through my earliest memories and I’m thrilled my children will have that connection to nature, too.

What local businesses do you rely on to be successful? Do you work at all with Hudson Valley Textile Project or mills?

I’ve worked with a number of Hudson Valley fiber artists and makers since moving here in 2015. We’ve collaborated as teachers, artists, and designers, and I used to host a monthly fiber arts meetup before the pandemic. I’ve also worked with regional farms like Wing & A Prayer Farm in southern VT for local wool, Battenkill Fiber Mill for custom-made skeins and Cornwall Yarn Shop for local felt. I’ve collaborated on limited-edition kits with local makers like Fat and the Moon and Good Fight Herb Co. I also love my nearby farms, like Hearty Roots and Sawkill Farm, for endless food and fiber inspiration.

What would be your dream project or collaboration?

In my dream project, there would be a robust local craft school that offered a range of classes in various mediums like fiber, clay, glass, metal, wood and printmaking. It would host workshops, conferences, and residencies for craft-based artists from our region and from all over the world. It would be a hub of activity for considering earth-friendly and ethical practices across craft disciplines. It would offer community studio space, focused retreats, and conversations with craft leaders from all fields. I’ve thought about this for so long, and I’ve come to realize that I don’t want to run it, but, gosh, it would be such a dream to be part of that community-building, skill-sharing and visioning.

Who or what inspires you personally?

I find inspiration everywhere. My kids inspire me endlessly. Also, my husband, mother, dearest friends, artists I’ve never met and authors I revisit often. I’m also inspired by plants, particularly plants that provide dyes, medicine, and food. The relationship between people and plants is endlessly fascinating to me–the history of how we’ve used and learned from plants since the beginning of human history.

Tell us something about yourself that people might be surprised to know.

I don’t love winter. I don’t mind snow but dislike the sleet, ice and long overcast days. I miss the flowering plants and the verdant landscape. But I’m learning to appreciate winter for the lesson it offers in putting our energy into our roots, just like the perennials do. I’m trying to look at it as a design challenge–instead of focusing on so much color and texture, I have to look at the landscape and notice design elements like line, form and value. It’s like winter is trying to give me an assignment on considering other design tools and I just have to keep practicing until I understand the teaching.

What would be your dream local Staycation?

I’ve wanted to go to Foxfire Mountain House for years, but somehow, with my two young kids and my full life as an art mom running a small business, it hasn’t happened yet. But someday, I’m going to go there for a long weekend with my husband and it will have been so worth the wait. I know it.

What is your current state of mind?

I try hard to stay optimistic and hopeful, but lately, my mindset is more like a murky weather forecast, “Overcast with a chance of rain… Or a chance of sunshine.”

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Buy all 3 of Katrina’s books: Mending Matters, Make Thrift Mend and The Paper Playhouse.

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