Spotlight: Casey Newman, Naturalist and Artist

Casey Newman has a Master’s degree in forest ecology where she learned about native plants and natural dyes. She now uses plants as dyes in her work, and teaches others how to harness a variety of plants to create dyes and botanical prints for their fiber arts.

How did you find yourself on a fiber artist’s path? Always there? Lightbulb moment? Dragged kicking and screaming? Evolving?

I have always been a creative person. Art supplies (and books) were always at the top of my birthday and Christmas wish lists.

I love knitting and sewing and when knitting had a huge resurgence in popularity in the early 2000s I saw knitters dye their yarn using Kool-Aid and was intrigued. I dabbled with dyeing yarn and fabric for my use and at the same time, I was working as an environmental educator.

I have always loved the outdoors and even have a Master’s degree in forest ecology. Through my environmental work, I learned more about native plants and then natural dyes. Using plants as dye enabled me to merge my two biggest passions. I’ve been down the rabbit hole ever since.

I use natural dyes exclusively in my work and teach others how to do so as well. 

Tell us about your farm. How did it come about?

I spent many years as the director large nature-based day summer camp programs. It was a job I loved, though over time it became difficult to balance parenting school aged children with a job that demanded long days of work and little time off during the months they were out of school.

I longed for a little bit of forest to tend to and a space to curate my own educational programs and so our search for some space out of the city began.

I was raised in a little house in the woods, with trails to walk and a creek to play in so for me it felt like coming home and I’m glad my family was enthusiastic about this new adventure too. We feel so lucky to have found this spot, with a few acres of our own adjacent to 75 acres of public forest. We call it Cedar Dell Forest Farm because we have much more forest than farm space.

With a vast forest on one side and quickly growing suburban neighborhoods on the other, our farm is in a great spot to connect people to nature through summer camp programs, weekday classes, workshops for homeschooling families, and natural dye workshops for all ages.

We honor the wild spaces of our property while making good use of the small clearings and sunny spots for a pasture for our Shetland sheep and gardens where I grow mostly plants to use for dyes.

It’s our vision that visitors interact with nature and art and animals in ways that are enriching to all. We have adopted a “please touch” philosophy where kids (and adults!) are free to play with sticks in the woods, gather mushrooms to identify, pick leaves for art projects, pet the sheep and dig in the garden.

How does your environment influence your creativity?

The natural spaces around me are truly my muse.

My botanical prints rely on leaves so I pay close attention to the cycles of the seasons and have learned which leaves I love to use when they’re fresh in the spring and which I prefer when I pick them off of the forest floor in autumn.

When the “production mode” of putting together a large wholesale order or preparing for an art festival threatens to suck the joy out of creating, I simply walk outside to gather my materials. A lush patch of wild geraniums, an alder leaf with interesting insect nibbles, or bright salmonberry flowers blooming amongst their butterfly-shaped leaves make me excited to bring them back into my studio to create something beautiful. 

I also embrace the seasonal nature of some of my work. Many leaves and dye plants that I grow can be dried and stored for use year-round but others are truly best in the moment.

Goldenrod flowers give the most vibrant sunshiny color when they have just bloomed and dyeing with fresh indigo leaves is best done within minutes of picking them. Sometimes nature’s timing doesn’t align with my human-made schedule and that can feel frustrating but when you enter into a creative partnership with Nature, you quickly learn that you can’t control all variables. 

Describe your creative space(s).

After years of working at my dining room table, and struggling to clear things away each day to allow room for my family to eat dinner, I feel so lucky to have a dedicated studio space on our farm.

Our home is built on a hill so a lot of spaces are a few steps up, or a short staircase down. My studio is on a lower level from our main living area and has its own entrance from the outside. I have large windows and a small deck off the back so I have a view of the forest on one side and our grazing sheep on the other.

I have no idea what the folks who built the house used this space for but it has a large sink and a ton of electrical outlets so it is very functional for my needs! Just upstairs is a bathroom as well as a small loft space I use for sewing and storage.

It’s perfect for teaching because folks can enter this space without coming through the main house and I can make big, creative messes, or set up a long term project and not worry about impacting anyone but myself.

What was the biggest challenge that you encountered on your creative journey? What did you learn from it?

Learning the art of botanical printing is best done through repetition and tons of trial and error and for a long time my leaf prints didn’t look neat at all.

In a way I feel lucky that I started on this journey before the advent of Facebook groups, and even before Instagram, and there were no local folks to learn from. Yes this absolutely made finding helpful tips and tricks challenging as I had to scour blog posts for tidbits of information but I feel like I would have easily been discouraged if my social media feed back then was full of pictures of amazingly beautiful botanical print artwork like it is now.

My first work was so blotchy and ill-defined that I definitely think I could have been discouraged completely by comparing my beginner attempts to “masters.” I made so many mistakes but learned from everyone. Even now if I get an unexpected result, whether I’m pleasantly surprised or disappointed, I try to figure out the WHY of what happened because that’s where growth as an artist happens.

I definitely keep this in mind as I teach classes or interact with social media groups. Yes, the best answer to someone’s question is often “try it and see!” but I know that can be very frustrating for beginners. I do my best to balance sharing enough information so that a student can be successful in an early attempt while also encouraging freedom to experiment and try out things for themselves. 

How do you balance your personal life, work, and creative endeavors? 

Honestly this is very hard for me! My artistic work feels like my calling and it brings me so much joy and fulfillment that sometimes it feels like I never clock out. This is a blessing and a curse.

Practically speaking, sometimes I spend so much time washing dye pots and jars in my studio that I don’t want to come upstairs and do it all over again with the family’s dishes in the kitchen. Haha!

Holding programs in my studio, which is part of our home, impacts my entire family. I definitely keep this in mind when scheduling workshops here so that I don’t overcommit to sharing our space with the public. Gone are the long summers of 10 weeks of camp programs and no family time! We only hold 2 or 3 weeks of programs here in the summers and I started teaching classes for homeschooling families in part so that I could do some of my teaching while my kids were in school, leaving weekends free for them to enjoy their home without visitors.

As far as creativity goes, I do not monetize all the things I love to do. I don’t want that pressure for myself, nor do I want to model that for my kids.

“Is this good enough to sell?” is not how I want them to approach their creativity. I keep a watercolor nature journal and love documenting the changing seasons in this way.

I also love knitting and rarely do I even knit something as a gift for a loved one. Right now I have two sweaters in progress. They’re both for me and I don’t feel guilty about that at all! 

If we were to visit your studio today, what would we find you working on? 

Once I get past the rush of holiday sales the winter is a very welcome down time. It’s a time I use to reflect on all the things I did in the past year and outline some goals and dreams for the next one.

You’ll find me with my trusty paper planner and a handful of rainbow-colored pens. I’ll also be working on creative projects without the pressure of needing to keep up inventory for markets.

I have had some beautiful ethically sourced and tanned goat hides in my cabinet for a couple of years now and this is the winter I want to learn to create beautiful leaf prints on leather. I’m excited to experiment with new techniques and also preparing for that humbling experience of being a beginner again. 

Do you lecture or teach workshops? How can students/organizers get in touch with you to schedule an event?

I have several online workshops available “on demand”, hosted by Skillshare. I’m honored to be a Top Teacher there, which means they consider my classes exceptionally high quality – both content and production-wise. I love making them and it’s a different kind of creative skill I’ve honed over the last several years. It is a membership site but I feel the value is so high since they have a wide range of amazing classes by teachers in all creative disciplines. You can also get a lengthy free trial by using a link from my website.

I teach in person as well. Occasionally I hold small workshops in my studio and elsewhere around Oregon. I do have a few multi-day workshops scheduled at art events in 2024 and you can find that info on my website. I always share new classes – online and in-person – in my email newsletter. 

I’m happy to tailor a class or demonstration to a group! I’ve taught after-school programs for school kids, given talks to garden clubs, shared botanical ink-making via zoom to a watercolor group, and even taught botanical printing to a group of refugee women who didn’t speak English. So if you think it up, I’ll probably be able to do it!  Just send me an email through my website’s contact form.

Where can people see your work?

You can find my online shop on my website and I also keep a list of in-person events that I’ll be participating in. Elsewhere on the internet, I share the most on Instagram. I love posting process videos, pictures of my farm, forest, and cute animals, as well as the things I create.

I’m also on TikTok, which is super fun but has a little different vibe than Instagram. Find me in one of those places and say hello! I try to not “post and run” but I like creating community and conversations so don’t be shy!

Interview posted January 2024