2025 and later

A recent new hobby of learning the bass guitar got me thinking about ambidexterity. My right hand leads the way while using scissors, and paddle sports like ping pong but not much else, I use my left (dominant) hand to write, draw, paint, garden, sew, chop food, and now I need it to press down on thick metal strings. Some recent stiffness has motivated me to not just get stronger but to start assigning new tasks to my ‘other’ hand in hopes of balancing out the load. This initially functional goal lead me down a meandering path that I’d like...

One of my favorite plant based processes in slow fashion & textile art is painting and print making. I work with a variation of a centuries old “oak gall ink” recipe that is made of oak galls and iron salts. This process starts with making an ink using iron salts, vinegar, and a thickener. The curing of ink requires two baths, one of which I use gallo tannins. This plant extract is from gall nuts or oak galls, which are fibrous growths on oak trees that the tree creates once a wasp has laid its eggs on a branch. The wasp later drills itself out of...

Malia Logan of 5280 interviewed me for the magazine in regards to women in the sustainable fashion scene in Denver. Below is the excerpt of the article. To see the full article visit https://5280.com/denver-best-sustainable-designers/  "The magic of plant dye, Leah Rich says, is that no two items ever turn out the same. Soil, water, even how plants are picked can alter the colors they produce. Under the banner of Round Trip Goods, Rich transforms secondhand garments using marigolds, indigo, and other plants she grows, buys, or forages. “I usually work with a blank article of clothing I find at the thrift...

I am working my way through Jason Logan's book "Make Ink" and currently boiled up some acorn caps for a rich dark grey ink for paper. I foraged a big paper bag full of large, smooth acorn caps from old oak trees near my Mom's house in Louisville, Kentucky last winter. I let them dry out first, then gave them a good wash before boiling them for 4-5 hours on a low simmer, the time split over 2 days.  After the boiling, I strained out the caps, added ferrous sulfate (iron salts that oxidizes the tannins within the dye/ink) to...