Johanna Schmal

Textile working process

The magic of transformation

Shortly after starting to work with fabric I became very curious about dying and creating my own colour palette. At that same time - back in 2018, still living in Berlin - I felt this longing for being in closer contact with nature again. So it came to me like naturally that I started investigating in natural plant dyes. Since then this is such a magical field to explore - plants transform to dyes which create hues for fabrics that become part of an artwork - often unpredictable and uncontrollable. Working with these colours is like being guided by nature itself and surrender to its beauty. These colours leave an imprint of their origin - their place of growth, living conditions and moment of harvest - in the fabric and connect the final work to this place. At the same time they breath life into the artwork itself which continues to transform slowly by the influence of time and light. Assembling the fabric with a quilting technique is - like dying - a way for me to preserve cultural heritage, to bring together again arts and crafts and to explore a contemporary expressions for it.