About Solstice Handmade
Since 2017, Solstice Handmade has been working with other local artists and small businesses to create unique offerings made with our hand pulled prints. From natural dye artists, to leather workers, to quilters and ceramicists, we invest in our friends and neighbors and believe more can be accomplished together. Whenever we can, we use local help, organic fabrics, natural colors, secondhand garments, and use up every scrap of material.
My illustrations and prints are often inspired by the creepy crawly, the slimy, the overlooked, the in-between stages of growth and decomposition, beginnings and endings. Education and exploration are at the heart of these images, and of our that classes bring together art and science. Through in person workshops and virtual classes, I aim to make art approachable and start conversations about conservation and place.
The murals I create put specific species and systems in the spotlight, hoping to inspire stewardship and curiosity in the world around us.
Find me at an art fair, library, festival, or shop near you.
About Dayna Walton
I came to love WNC through the Artist-in-Residence program of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2019. Since then I've been hiking and sketching and learning about ecology wherever I can. My illustrations are my way of studying the creepy, crawly, tiny, often overlooked parts of nature. From slime molds and stoneflies, to lichens and liverworts, you're sure to recognize some species from the Blue Ridge Mountains in my work.
I studied Printmaking at Kendall College of Art and Design in Michigan, where I learned about screen printing. I now work in a home studio where my partner and I use silkscreens to turn my ink drawings into prints. I often collaborate with other craftspeople like sewers, dyers, and leatherworkers to make unique functional goods from printed textiles and paper. Creating wearable pieces will always be special to me because of their potential to bring people together who share a love for nature, I hope they bond over stories of bats and bugs.