September 12 - October 5

ADORATION OF LIGHT:

Yellows Derived from Plants, Fungi, & Minerals

Artist reception: Second Saturday Artwalk on September 12 from 5–8pm.

An artist talk and walk through the exhibit with Daire and several participating artists will start at 5:00pm

Astoria Visual Arts (AVA) welcomes installation artist and educator Iris Sullivan Daire for Adoration of Light: Yellows Derived from Plants, Fungi & Minerals, on view September 12–October 5. The exhibition is the third in Daire’s biennial series exploring natural color, following Indigo Matrix (2022) and Madder Reds (2024).

Adoration of Light considers yellow at the intersection of human and more-than-human realities, exploring natural color as a source of beauty, knowledge, connection, and collective action. Sixteen regional and national artists are featured alongside work by 10 young artists from Clatsop County. The exhibition also includes contributions from Laughing Rabbit Farm in Astoria, 46 North Farm in Olney, and Grand Prismatic Seed in Salt Lake City, as well as soundscapes by Thomas Meinzen of Portland and Tarun Nayar of Vancouver, BC.

Yellow is both abundant and precious in the natural world. Across cultures, people have long developed relationships with locally available plants, fungi, and minerals to create yellow dyes. Unlike historically coveted colors such as indigo and madder red, yellow is remarkably plentiful, appearing in countless forms throughout the landscape. Sources of natural yellow are legion: birch, artichoke, Scotch broom, bigleaf maple, cosmos, marigold, goldenrod, Oregon grape, apple, and many more. Each carries its own ecological, cultural, and material history. 

Yellow has also taken on contemporary political and social meaning. It has been used as a symbol of solidarity by movements grounded in active nonviolence and resistance, from the yellow umbrellas of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement to the high-visibility vests worn during France’s Yellow Vest protests. Daire considers whether yellow—associated with sunlight, nourishment, communication, and joy—might also emerge as a color of collective care and resilience.

The 16 artists expand the exhibition into a collective inquiry, each approaching yellow through their own materials, processes, and relationships to the natural world. Featured works include fiber and textiles, naturally dyed cloth, sculpture, two-dimensional works, and several installations, including one incorporating bioluminescent mushrooms. Together, these varied practices draw from plants, minerals, labor, ecology, and lived experience to create a many-voiced conversation around yellow—not simply as a color, but as a shared language of attention, resilience, care, and possibility.

“The color of the sun, the color of nurturing, the color of joy. In an upside down world of exploitation which may feel increasingly brutal, the healing provided by this little mother is not to be underestimated,” Daire writes in her Substack essay, “Adoration of Light – The Power of Yellow in Dark Times.” “The gold offered by plants is a common treasury for us all - a treasury that relies on tending and care of the living web. The economy of interrelationship based on nurturing, a wealth which feeds the many. Yellow is the color we need during these times, it has the capacity to center us in joy, while also able to combine with worker blue to create the green of fair share and earth care. The flavonoids are colors of clear communication, cooperation, and a celebration of diversity which is our source of strength.”

Regional and national artists featured in the exhibition, in addition to Daire, include Jessica Schleif (Astoria), Terenia Fick (Astoria), Marilyn Robert (Eugene), Sara Kundelius (Forest Grove), Brittany Boles (Gearhart), Constance Waisanen (Knappa), Carolyn Sweeney (Portland), Kyla Sjogren (Wheeler), Douglas Pierre Baulos (Irondale, AL), Emma Akmakdjian (Santa Monica, CA), Jasmine Lace Petrie (East Jordan, MI), Margaret Sullivan (Reserve, NM), Hannah Regier (Athens, VT), Emma Geddes (Newbury, VT), and Julie Beeler (Trout Lake, WA).

Daire grew up in a small Midwestern farm town, where she learned a wide range of practical and creative skills from the women in her family. She began weaving at age seven, an early interest that eventually led her to earn a BFA in Fiber Arts, with a focus on natural dyes, from the University of Oregon in 1996. After graduation, Daire and her husband moved to Astoria, where she taught fiber arts classes at the local college. During her early years on the Oregon Coast, she started a family, helped found the Blue Scorcher Bakery with her husband, and continued an extensive study and practice of natural dyeing that eventually grew into her business, Dream Bird Studio.

Adoration of Light Dye Workshop

with Iris Sullivan Daire

Sunday, October 4, 3–5pm
Register here: AstoriaVisualArts.org.