About the Artist

Suzanne Locascio (she/her) is a local artist and longtime resident of the New River Valley. Her recent concentration and obsession with fiber arts and natural dyeing developed during the time of the COVID-19 global pandemic. After teaching online art and graphic design classes at Radford University in the Spring of 2020 and 2021, she would spend the rest of her day knitting and sewing new and challenging garments or walking the neighborhood with her dog Gus. This respite from indoor quarantine allowed her to focus on tiny discoveries: the neighborhood flora that was most often ignored could actually be used as part of the process of fiber arts - specifically natural dyeing. The first tiny discovery was black walnuts, usually a pesky tripping hazard, that had fallen to the ground. The rich brown hues that could so easily be extracted from the husk had vaulted Suzanne’s interest into searching for other plants and flowers that could also have color extracted. One of her other passions, gardening, would support extending the color pallet in summer growing season to provide an array of golden yellows and neon oranges from chamomile, cosmos, and marigold flowers. She will continue her natural dyeing journey this summer with homegrown Japanese Indigo, Persicaria tinctoria, and will begin too many knitting projects simultaneously.