Amy will be in the Gallery all day Sunday, December 6 to discuss her work and demo a few of her her botanical alchemy techniques.

Amy Hemphill Dove’s materials and subject matter are pure nature. She roams landcapes collecting everything that catches her attention, and back in her studio she explores the potentials. Amy exclaims “I love this process! The botanicals releases remarkable secrets from local plants that we see every day and often take for granted. Botanical dyeing and printing allow me to look beyond the usual green of leaves and to really see the shapes, structure and the chemistry in nature.”

And Amy knows her chemistry, earning a Bachelor of Science in Textile Design from Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science. After college, Amy also worked as a Jacquard fabric designer for a major eastern mill, creating many contemporary, abstract, floral, and more traditionally patterned interior fabrics for select furniture manufacturers.

A consummate experimenter, Amy combines techniques and materials freely. She dyes, felts, prints, stitches onto a range of natural textiles to suprising results. Using diverse techniques of Shibori (the Japanese art of resist dyeing and texturing), folding, pleating, binding, and printing: she creates a unique beauty and diversity in her pieces. There are so many variables at work in this kind of alchemy, including soil, climate, water, PH, type and weave of the fibers and fabrics, they keep Amy on her toes.

Her drive to explore new directions, generates incredible variety in her pieces, each is a one-of-a-kind creation. The broad range of fibers and techniques she uses become scarves, tapestries, shawls and more, all with an organic beauty that take your breath away. On display this month are hand-dyed, botanical printed silk scarves, shawls, wraps and felted wall-hangings.