PUERTO RICO: NATURAL DYES STUDIES

My practice is rooted in an ongoing exploration of natural dyes throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. I am interested in how each landscape produces its own unique spectrum of color, shaped by local plants, insects, minerals, climate, and generations of textile knowledge. By comparing these regional color palettes, I seek to understand how place is embedded within cloth and how color can become a record of ecology, culture, and time.

Through this research, I am creating a living color archive that documents natural dyes, fibers, recipes, and their geographic origins. Each swatch serves as both a scientific record and a cultural document, preserving not only the process behind a color but also the environment and traditions from which it emerged. I envision this archive as a form of botanical and textile anthropology through color—a growing library that honors the intimate relationship between land, material, and memory.

This archive becomes the foundation of my textile practice. I transform these naturally dyed swatches into wood-framed, hand-sewn wall companions I call Diablillo. Each Diablillo brings together colors gathered across different regions, allowing multiple landscapes, histories, and ecosystems to coexist within a single textile form. As my research expands, so too will this evolving family of companions, each one carrying the colors and stories of the places that shaped it.