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By Kathaleen Roberts / Journal Staff Writer Published: Thursday, July 28th, 2022 at 4:02PM Updated: Thursday, July 28th, 2022 at 4:05PM

Known for her silken textiles splashed with vibrant color, Placitas artist Dorothy Bunny Bowen expanded her repertoire during the pandemic.

As the world shut down, she ventured into the wood from her back yard, as well as clay.

The results are on view in “Dorothy Bunny Bowen: Branching Out” at Placitas’ Wild Hearts Gallery through Aug. 28.

“I’ve been a textile person since 1980 when I first learned batik,” she said. “A lot of things just stopped. I’ve always loved wood. I carved our front door out of alder and walnut.”

Living amid a juniper forest, she began gathering branches for her creations.

“I’ve been trying to use what I have rather than buying things,” she continued. “During COVID, it was hard to get stuff.”

As she played with clay, she attached pieces to her trees’ trimming scars as “tree blessings.” She also formed clay plaques.

Bowen’s piece “Scout” emerged from the meandering channels of beetle-kill pine with aspen and indigo dye after she saw the recent Albuquerque Museum indigo exhibition.

“It occurred to me it would be fun to use indigo on wood,” she said. She topped the branch with a natural piece of oiled aspen resembling an undefinable creature.

“The first name for it was ‘Critter,’ ” she said of the imaginary folly.

“Standing Raven” grew from a piece of juniper, the top carved into the bird’s head.

“We have them out here, of course,” Bowen said. “They’re just wonderful mythological creatures. The Phoenicians carried ravens on their ships to guide them. Later, the Vikings continued the practice. If they came back, they knew they were not near land.”

Bowen grew up in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, earning a bachelor’s degree in art as she studied printmaking and lithography. She moved to Placitas in 1975 and worked for the Museum of International Folk Art under a grant analyzing textiles.

A batik workshop at Placitas Elementary School launched her fiber career. The medium combined her love of textiles with her love of painting.

“Batik is images with wax and dye,” she said. “Instead of being a surface thing, it’s actually in the fiber. You’re working with lots of different layers like layers of watercolor; you’re scrubbing the dyes into the silk.”

Bowen began with cotton; she has been painting on silk since 1999.

She uses the Japanese rozome technique on silk, applying the wax with a brush to resemble calligraphy.

First she draws a design in pencil or charcoal on the back of white kimono silk. Then she stretches the silk, adding a mixture of soybeans and water for sizing.

Next Bowen applies a molten mixture of beeswax and paraffin or soy wax to any areas where the silk is to remain white. She prefer to mix all of her colors from the basics: warm red, cool red, yellow, blue and black. She sets the dyes by steaming.

“Forest Phoenix,” a wax resist dye on kimono silk, echoes her feelings about the forest, especially the resilience of aspen groves

“Every summer since 1971, we’ve gone up to Colorado and spent time in a cabin at 9,000 feet,” she explained. “It occurred to me that after a fire, the aspen are the first to come back. It’s like a phoenix tree because it’s the first one to come up from the ashes.”

If you go: WHAT: “Dorothy Bunny Bowen: Branching Out”

WHERE: Wild Hearts Gallery, 221-B N.M. 165, Placitas

CONTACT: wildheartsgallery-nm.com, 505-361-2710.