Sow to Sew Speaker Series: Julia Rose Sutherland

Please join artist Julia Rose Sutherland for an overview of her interdisciplinary practice, with a focus on her craft-based textile work. Grounded in natural dye processes, ethical foraging practices, and her perspective as an Indigenous artist, her work centers relationships to land, material, and community, exploring how dye practices can carry cultural knowledge, responsibility, and reciprocity. 

Sutherland will also speak about her role as co-director of the OCADU Sustainable Colour Lab (SCL), a research space dedicated to relational approaches to place, space, and time through colour. The lab focuses on sourcing pigments from local, ethically gathered materials and supports land-based learning and shared knowledge. Through this work, SCL advances holistic approaches to art-making that consider the full lifecycle of materials while challenging reliance on synthetic and petrochemical-based processes. 

She will also share insights from two current research projects: How to Have a Fest, as well as an ongoing exploration of natural dyeing with invasive plant species such as phragmites, rooted in attentive and ethical foraging practices.

About The Artist

Julia Rose Sutherland is a Mi’kmaq (Metepenagiag Nation) and settler artist, storyteller, and educator based in Toronto. Her interdisciplinary practice spans photography, sculpture, textiles, quillwork, and performance, exploring themes of identity, cultural memory, and Indigenous representation. She holds an MFA from the University at Buffalo and a BFA from the Alberta College of Art + Design, and is currently an Assistant Professor at OCAD University and the co-director of OCADU Sustainable Colour Lab.