Hey, dears!
My name is Miel Rose Leslie. I’m a rural, low income, chronically ill and neurodivergent femme. I’m a second generation craftsperson and was raised off the grid by hippies as a settler on traditional Nulhegan Abenaki tribal lands in the wilds of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Much of my work since 2020 was made in collaboration with this same land, as many of the plants I use for dyeing are grown there with the help of my dad. It has been deep magic and joy to have the space to dye outside over an open fire after years of dyeing inside. I will soon be returning to live there full time.
flame & honeycomb is the container through which I make my work available//cupped palms spilling over. It is a constantly evolving articulation of my passionate love affair with creative flow, following the sparking flames as they spill from my heart through my hands and into physical reality. Making the unseen *SEEN*. The name flame & honeycomb comes from an old Irish prayer to Brigid, a Saint with deep Pagan roots, and was chosen because I love her.
The creations that come into being through me vary in form and function, but they are always an expression of my relationship to plant kin, my love of ancestral craft, and my desire to increase pleasure in the world through beauty and magic. My love of thread and fiber stretches far beyond the first time I held a needle as a child and I can feel the muscle memories of many hands working the many stitches to transform fibers into functional art.
Before colonialism, capitalism and industrialization, all that our ancestors crafted was useful and beautiful and full of energy and spirit. The crafting was in respectful relationship with the materials used and their sources from the land they lived with. As a craftsperson who is a perpetual student of what it means to be an animist during late stage capitalism, this is a way of working that deeply resonates. The pieces birthed through my hands have a being-hood of their own, and are tangible threads of an ever deepening way of relating as a corporeal being on this planet in this time and place.
The work that comes through me emerges in its own time, a reality that is not super conducive to thriving in capitalism. I’m not an assembly line (though I have deep respect for folks who work assemble lines), or a cookie cutter, and mass production isn’t really my thing. It is a lot faster to hem a scarf, or to quilt a quilt on a machine, but there is something about the energy imbued by taking the time to make stitches by hand that benefits the beauty and vitality of my work. All my work is one of a kind,even within the small batches I make. Even if I was dedicated to exact repetition (which I am not), the plants makes sure of this with their ever shifting results. I love to encourage this variation and variegation, doing everything I can to *not* get a solid, flat result.
If I had my way I would create my work from the ground up, growing the plants to thresh for fiber, spinning and weaving to make the cloth before dyeing it with beloved plants and hand stitching everything into being. But capitalism plus a degenerative connective tissue disorder plus wanting my work to be as financially accessible as possible all equals picking and choosing the places where I get in there with my bare hands.
While I am not making my own fabric currently, I am prioritizing ecologically sound(er) textiles for the raw bases of my work. My older stash of more economical commercial cotton, dyed over many years, will slowly be replaced by organic cotton, hemp, linen, sustainably grown raw silk, and the occasional upcycled cloth that make up my fabric stash moving forward. The plants I works with for dye are either home grown, ethically harvested in small amounts from abundant stands in the wild, or sourced from trusted purveyors of botanical dyes (in the case of indigo and madder extracts).
Being a craftsperson can be very solitary work. I deeply appreciate getting to share my work with folks and connect about fiber craft! And I am always grateful when people feel called to bring something I’ve made with my two hands home with them! Thank you so incredibly much for visiting and reading this and if you wind up claiming something(s), I hope they prove to be a source of beauty and joy for you in these wild times.
Xoxo Miel
