About Cara Marie Piazza
Cara Marie Piazza is a New York City–based artist and natural dyer whose practice uses plant and mineral color to translate inner landscapes into material form. From her Brooklyn dye house, Calyx Studios, she works through slow, ritual processes with botanicals, minerals, non-toxic metals, and plant-derived waste. Her work embodies a meditative approach to making, where drawing color from the natural world becomes a bridge between the subconscious and the conscious.
Drawn to the overlooked, and the alchemical processes of dyeing as ritual, she thinks of color as terroir: local, seasonal, ancestral. Every dye bath is a conversation with our human lineage. Her work uses dyed cloth across a variety of mediums, from dressing the body to interior spaces and immersive experiences. She teaches as an extension of this practice, sharing her reverence for the color-making capacity of plants. Her essays in The Florilegium follow this thread through the synchronicities of noticing, observing plant connections, and storytelling through recipes. Dyeing as a form of memory. A fostered relationship to attention.
Alongside Calyx Studios, she serves as Creative Marketing Director of Botanical Colors, one of the leading natural dye suppliers in North America.
Calyx Studios is a multidisciplinary natural dye house working in collaboration with the natural world. The studio weaves color as a form of contemplation using botanicals, plant matter, minerals, non‑toxic metals, and food waste to translate inner landscapes into cloth. At Calyx, industry meets alchemy, and creative play becomes a pathway towards healing, reflection, and reconnection with the living world.
We create our conscious colors by only using natural dyestuffs such as botanicals, plant matter, minerals, non-toxic metals and food waste, transforming each project into its own unique story. At Calyx, industry meets alchemy.
By sharing this knowledge our studio believes we can help empower and heal with creative play. We offer workshops and immersive experiences on the public and corporate scale for natural dyeing, curating unique experiences merging healing, color resonance and art.
For large scale natural dye production orders, please email: info@caramariepiazza.com.
Clients include: Coach, Jason Wu, Mara Hoffman, B - Sides, Another Tomorrow, Cadis, Sabah Shoes, Limusina, Mitsuru, Eileen Fisher, Samuel Snider, Eckhaus Latta, Alice Waese, Dena Yago, Club Monaco, Chakrubs, Jennifer Behr, 11:11, Judi Rosen, Mimi Prober and more.
We have run Brand & Social Media Activations for: MoMA, Care of Chan x Aesop , Project Gather, Dr.Martens, Espolón Tequila, Ulla Johnson, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, Swiss Army Knife, Buffy, KOTN, Cotton Inc, Nordstroms x AG Jeans.
We have a non - toxic wallpaper line with Wallpaper Projects