I've discovered you can dye things

I always struggle to find the exact right color for whatever material I’m using to make something. If I just used paint it would be easier. But I’m always trying to use physical materials that feel familiar to represent blocks of data or pieces of something that add up to a big dataset.

When I saw these gorgeous acrylic blocks online, I hunted to find a way to make them or buy them inexpensively - after much frustration I went deep into youtube and found a video for how to dye plastic and acrylic. The trick is boiling dye. Big pots of boiling idye poly - very exciting it worked!

Hand dyed polished acrylic

And when I bought a bunch of very expensive wool felt and hated some of the colors, I ‘fixed’ them by putting the wool into boiling pots of idye natural. I discovered that if you dyed them in one color, you could dry and dip into another color to create this triple layer color pattern when you cut into the felt. I was trying to approximate materials that looked and felt like bio-fabricated futurist cellular stuff that could grow on walls. Totally worked.

Hand dyed wool felt

My last foray into dying was a breakthrough to try dying paper… same problem, really nice cotton paper is hard to find in good colors at any price. Some of the best paper from Nepal and India are completely missing, heavy Lotka paper is impossible to find, and Khadi paper that came in interesting colors is nowhere to be found. Voila!

This works better than I expected, 100% Khadi paper from Talas and I’m off and running. It’s an unbelievable pain cause you mix the dyes to make better colors, pour boiling dye into flat roasting pans and each piece takes about 10 minutes and you need to keep turning it over with tongs to keep the color even. Totally worth it. Wait til you see what I can make.