Spontaneous Atelier is a holistic design studio founded in 2013. Our studio focuses on botanical alchemical research & crafting of natural pigments, living color medicinal textiles & healing herbal garments, teaching and preserving time worn traditions of the slow art form of crafting colors.
High vibrational living requires harmonious lifestyle choices. Through natural color we can deepen our connection to our earth. When connected we operate from a place of love and harmony with the earth in all we do. These harmonious actions are of great importance now, in this time of great change on earth.
Bioregional Colors
Our atelier is based around the earth’s natural cycles. Communing through observation & crafting with the landscape & its elements in focus. Its a slow meditative process that is nothing short of magic. Our focus is on creating with botanicals in our surrounding region, creating relationships with farmers and land stewards & growing much of what we need. We operate our studio in Chirripo, Costa Rica, and seasonally in Muskoka, Ontario, Canada. We acknowledge that we are on the traditional lands of the Brunka, Anishinabewaki & Mississauga people and pay respects to elders both past and present.
Spontaneous Atelier is the working title of multidisciplinary artist Nicole Varney. Her early buddhist family life, blend with her experience in fashion and herbal plants and a deep reverence to living the beauty way has lead her down the path of living color.
Inspired by the shifting seasons in Ontario Canada in her early life gave her an appreciation for earth’s cycles. Whilst much of her life has been spent traveling, places like remote beaches of the Andaman Islands & north Denmark mossy forests, Old growth coastal forests of Sonoma California and city gardens and Oak groves of London has deepened relationship to earth, attuning her in new ways.
Blending her expertise in healing arts with her studio practice, she brings awareness, magic & intuitive touch to all she touches. She holds a Associates degree in fashion management, has studied fine arts at Richmond University & University of the Ars in London. She holds a Chartered Herbalist Diploma from Dominion Herbal College and an Ayurvedic Clinical Foundations from Deanna Batdoff. She has a taught sustainable fashion program at Toronto district school board, taught natural dye workshops all over Ontario. She has operated a dye studio for over 10yrs in Ontario & nomadically and has many private & designer clients. She is the author of “Seasonal Hues, A guide to color and plants from the landscape”.
She currently lives in Chirripo, Costa Rica, where she tends to her extensive dye garden and runs her studio practice blessed by the waters of the chirripo rio.
Production Color
I operated a nomadic dye studio from 2016 - 2021, collaborating with designers & clients to create nature’s rainbow. Much was earned during this time & developed our skills & deepened our craft.
I will be sharing some wisdom from these years of production in the upcoming course “Nomadic Dyeing”, see classes page for more info.
