About Your Instructor

Astrid Hilger Bennett has decades of experience working with fiber reactive dyes, and more recently, natural dyes, using them for painting, screen printing, monoprinting, and immersion dyeing. She has taught workshops in multiple university, craft school, and guild settings in the US and Chile. Astrid established an outdoor community indigo vat during the Pandemic, inviting two local artists and residents at a time to try samples over a two hour period; 45 participated in the first two years and the project continues to the present moment. This also led her to explore growing, foraging for and using natural dyes and inks.  Astrid received her BFA in Printmaking at Indiana University and has exhibited her large scale work nationally, in Europe and Japan, including in multiple Quilt National exhibitions. She is a cultural, small business and artist advocate, having served as longtime manager, marketing director & co-owner of Iowa Artisans Gallery in Iowa City from 1991-2017. As a volunteer, she assists with a sewing space for a local nonprofit focused on immigrant Latinx members, helping teach women to sew dance costumes for their children. She currently serves as SDA Board Co-Chair and Chair of the Events Committee and enjoys sharing her knowledge and skill set with the next generation of makers.