fabricflowers

WHEN you are a practicing alchemist, as Sasha Duerr is, strangers will often ask you to demonstrate your powers by heating up a caldron in the yard. It’s a living, and Ms. Duerr is usually happy to give it a try. On a recent Monday afternoon, she had arranged to spark up three propane camp stoves and scavenge a few things to boil.

Ms. Duerr, 36, intended to show how easy it is to transmute common plants into natural fabric dyes of rare beauty. The formula has been an open secret since the days of Pliny the Elder: fill a pot with water, add a basket of leaves and a square of silk, bring the potion to a simmer. Then wait for the magic to happen.Ms. Duerr had set up her folding table on the Oakland grounds of the California College of the Arts, where she teaches textile design.Two years ago, we started this garden,” she said, walking into a shady corner near an earthquake supply shed. Before that, the unkempt space was kind of a home for wayward art projects.

In three or four beds ringed by salvaged bricks, Ms. Duerr has planted a rainbow row.The root of the madder plant creates a true red. “Poppy roots make a yellow-orange,” she said. A light green comes from fava bean vines. “You know you can eat the fava leaves, too,” Ms. Duerr said. And she snapped off some foliage for a quick snack.

Across the street from the garden, a Wendy’s was advertising a crispy chicken sandwich at a shockingly low price. Ms. Duerr believes the equivalent of fast food is fast fashion: an industrial process filled with joyless overconsumption and noxious byproducts.