RSI 2008 | Courses | Creativity and the Arts | Celebrating Color! An Exploration in Fiber Arts and Plant Dyes | PING
Rudolf Steiner Institute

Creativity and the Arts
Celebrating Color! An Exploration in Fiber Arts and Plant Dyes
JANENE PING
JANENE PING
has taught kindergarten at the Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School in upstate New York since 1991 and is chair of the Early Childhood Department. For twenty years her love of textiles has kept her hands busy inspiring interior classroom design, toy making, and children's crafts. She founded and has been artistic director of "The Magical Puppet Tree" since 1992, creating and performing over seventy-five different multicultural folk and fairytales for children of all ages. She has taught Waldorf early childhood pedagogy and puppetry at adult training centers throughout the Northeastern US and Canada.
One Week Intensive: July 20 - 26, 3 Sessions per Day
8:30 - 10:00 | 10:30 - 12:00 | 2:30 - 4:00

THE PUREST AND MOST THOUGHTFUL MINDS ARE THOSE WHICH LOVE COLOR THE MOST

—John Ruskin

Imagine inventing the color yellow! Can you taste the color purple? Listen to the hills sing green. Do you see the world through rose-colored glasses? Have you ever had the blues? Most of us live in a daily experience of awakening to and falling asleep within the world of color. The artist's eye is inspired by its teaching. The child's temperament is brightened by its hue. The botanist's research is informed by its observation. This course will give participants the opportunity to spend a week immersed in the full spectrum of color's possibility. Through work with prisms, Goethe's color theory, and qualities of planetary influence, we will explore the inner nature of color and live into the wonders of light's mysterious gift to the world.

Our week's activities will also include work with fiber arts and textiles in the alchemical processes of bringing natural plant color to wool and silk. The "magic rainbow" wool dye bath, techniques of silk painting, and discoveries in color gradation and over-dyeing will be taught. Participants will take home uniquely colored materials for handwork, puppetry set design, and nature tables.

Materials fee: $75.