Dawn

Foster Jeffries

Fiber

Dawn Foster Jeffries is a botanical dye artist. She finds great joy in merging her passions for science, nature, outdoor exploration, and gardening through her work with dyes extracted from plants and eco printing. Eco printing is a remarkable technique that allows natural dyes, pigments, tannins, and textures found in plants to be transferred onto various surfaces like paper, fabric, and clay. This process involves careful arrangement of leaves, flowers, and other botanical materials onto the chosen surface. From a young age, she was fascinated by the scientific world, performing experiments with her mother, who was a microbiologist. Working with botanical dyes and plants has allowed her to continue her exploratory endeavors.

All of her art is made using plants. Her art process includes growing and collecting plant specimens. She compresses and steams plant matter between paper or fabric to capture the pigments and patterns from the actual plant. She grows many of these plants in her ever-expanding dye garden. She also loves exploring Colorado’s trails with her Labrador Retriever, Link, gathering plant material to use to craft her prints. Her art is inspired by the mysteries and science of vegetation native to Colorado and throughout the world.

She is a Colorado native and lives in Littleton with her spouse and 3 children. In addition to creating art and shuttling her children from activity to activity, she enjoys working with children through Destination Imagination, a creative, problem-solving STEAM program.