Who we are
CSG was born from a desire to investigate the materiality of color. We are a group of UC Santa Cruz students and alumni from UCSC’s Art Department and we interrogate the cultural, psychological, and metaphysical implications of color. We also have interests in learning about natural dyeing, indigenous land practices, native plants, decolonization, and abolition; constantly raising the question: how can we use plants to tell stories?
Our interests in color and the world it inhabits are ever-expanding, but as of late this group is most focused on natural dyeing and the planting of a community dye garden. We originally intended to create a dye garden that focused on memorialized the indigenous people of the UCSC campus. But through our latest collaboration and connection, we've conceptualized our garden as a space that speaks of abolition, decolonization, and acknowledgment of the indigenous and the stolen land that we sit on. Our latest project, Freedom Garden (working title), is currently being conceptualized in collaboration with Timothy Young, a wrongly convicted and death row imprisoned black man. We see plants as comrades in abolition, and see the freedom of land, the freedom of all those imprisoned by the state, and collective liberation as intrinsically linked. Although there is no physical garden yet, we are constantly conceptualizing our intentions and goals for this soon to come garden!
Color Study Group was originally created as an Independent Study made up of artists Edgar Cruz, Natalie Del Castillo, Jocelyn Lee, Sophie Lev and Klytie Xu with Art Professor Laurie Palmer. It has now evolved into a cohort of members, frequent collaborators, and individuals who are deeply interested in using plants as storytellers.
Although we work collectively on our Freedom Garden, we each have our own artistic practices and endeavors. We use Color Study as a space to share our projects and ideas, but also to collaborate with each other, build community, and inspire one another. Please feel free to learn more about us individually below!
Edgar Cruz
Edgar is a photo-based BIPOC artist who holds a B.A. in Fine Art and Environmental Studies from UC Santa Cruz. He is currently living in his hometown of South Central LA exploring projects related to open space, inclusivity, food justice, and indigenous storytelling.
Edgar is currently working on starting a network of native plant gardens that holds no boundaries to space. If you are interested in receiving native seeds and learning more about natives, please don't hesitate to contact him!
Natalie Del Castillo
Natalie graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2020 with a B.A. in Art, focused on analog photography. She lives in Pasadena, CA and her favorite color is Prussian Blue. She enjoys experimenting with alternative art-making processes like cyanotype, natural dyeing, paint-making, and others. She is an avid avocado pit collector and has a couple boxes of pits so if you want to try your hand at avocado pit dyeing just holler! Her most recent projects involve mural planning and zine-making, exploring ways of making art accessible to the public and able to distribute to plant seeds of change!
Jocelyn Lee
Jocelyn Lee is a recent graduate from UC Santa Cruz and holds degrees in Cognitive Science and Studio Art. She was born and raised in San Francisco and has currently returned home to take her dog on long walks down Great Highway and watch Flea Market Flip with her parents. Her favorite plants to dye with are self-dubbed "food doubles", plants that can produce dye and still be consumed after. Beets, black beans, broccoli, and carrots can all be found in the garden or supermarket and serve as brilliant dyes.
Her art practice is motivated in the utilization of printmaking's ability to create the identical multiple for public-facing applications. Infiltration of the nostalgic and popular visual culture allow a subversion that propagates her own intended message.
Klytie Xu
Klytie Xu is a writer and artist in her 4th year at UC Santa Cruz studying Art and Literature. She is interested in the intersections of both Art and Creative Writing as ways to experience an infinite number of selves. Originally from the Bay Area, she is currently based in Santa Cruz.
Her current work explores family, language, color, and names. She likes to make inks out of foraged natural material such as redwood cones and black walnut hulls.