Jenni Willis
Jenni lives in Booborowie, a small country town in the Mid North of South Australia. She returned to her childhood home town to help her parents and to raise her daughter, and then she stayed.
Always interested in the natural world, Jenni played with various mediums to portray what she saw before finding her passion, dying silk with plants and flowers.
Whilst gardening to heal and to bring colour back into her life Jenni became intrigued with the coloured stains on her hands. This, coupled with reading an article on extracting dye from flowers began her journey into the world of natural dyes.
Jenni grows most of the plants she uses for dying in her large garden, an excuse to grow flowers as well as vegetables. Her motto is ”If I can’t eat it, dye with it or it has an amazing perfume I don’t plant it”. The beautiful hues born from flowers, the occasional vegetable and leaves never cease to amaze her. It seems the palette is endless. Continual experimentation with techniques for extracting dyes, different plants, even different seasons keep Jenni enamoured with the process.
Each of Jenni’s pieces of wearable art take about 6 weeks to complete, with some of the more intense colours using 5000 flowers. All are individually hand dyed and unique, as every petal has a different concentration of colour to contribute.
Jenni gains great joy in every part of the process. Planting, harvesting, designing, dying and finally, composting all waste to complete the cycle.