Faculty Profile
JENAI HOOKE
Botanic Textile Artist
Artist · Natural Dyer · Educator · Modern-Day Elder
Jenai Hooke is a botanical textile artist, natural dyer and educator whose practice spans more than four decades.
Working from her bushland studio in Eudlo on the Sunshine Coast, Jenai explores the extraordinary colour held within the natural world — transforming plants, leaves, flowers and other natural materials into pigments, dyes, prints and richly layered textile works.
Her practice encompasses plant dyeing, eco-dyeing and printing, Indigo, Shibori, mixed media, botanical printing on paper and cloth, stitching, knitting, crochet and fibre arts.
What Jenai is about
At the heart of her work is a simple philosophy:
To understand the value of working with nature
— and to create colour and beauty in the world.
A lifetime working with natural colour
Jenai began working with plant pigments in 1983.
Her interest in textiles began even earlier. Wanting to learn to spin wool, she received a spinning wheel from her parents for her 21st birthday and went looking for somewhere to learn how to use it.
That search led her to textile studies at the Sydney School of Textiles, where natural dyeing became one of the modules in her course.
At the time, Australian knowledge of botanical dyeing was heavily influenced by English traditions and produced a relatively subdued, earthy palette. Jenai became increasingly interested in the much broader traditions of natural colour found in other cultures — and in the different technologies, plants and accumulated knowledge that enabled them.
That curiosity has taken her around the world.
Jenai has undertaken specialist textile and natural-dye studies and workshops in France, the United States, Mexico and Japan, continually expanding her understanding of the relationship between plants, pigment, fibre and place.
In France in 2011, she attended the International Symposium of Natural Dyes, studying Shibori with Yoshika Wada and Colours of Provence with Michel Garcia.
In 2014, she studied in the United States with internationally recognised Shibori artist Ana Lisa Hedstrom.
In 2016, Jenai attended the International Shibori Symposium in Mexico.
In Japan in 2023, she undertook a masterclass with Indigo master Takayuki Ishii in Fujino, studying traditional Japanese Indigo production, vatting and dyeing, Shibori design and the construction of hand-sewn garments.
Another profound influence on Jenai's practice has been Malian contemporary artist, textile designer and master Indigo dyer Aboubakar Fofana. Between 2012 and 2018, Jenai attended four of his workshops in Australia.
His teaching transformed not only her technical practice but her relationship with the materials themselves — teaching her to work with presence and mindfulness, and with a deeper spiritual connection to the plants and materials she uses.
His expectation of excellence, coupled with his capacity to empower his students to deliver it, has remained a significant influence on her practice.
Of all the colours she has explored, Indigo has become the enduring focus of Jenai's practice.
She grows it, extracts pigment from the leaves, maintains dye vats, works with traditional resist techniques and teaches others how an unassuming green plant can yield one of humanity's most extraordinary natural colours.
Artist, educator and community practitioner
Jenai's work extends beyond her own studio practice.
For many years she has taught workshops, classes and masterclasses; participated in exhibitions and public installations; mentored others; and contributed to community arts projects designed to reconnect people with natural materials and processes.
She is the founder of the Sunshine Coast Natural Dyers Interest Group (SCNDIG), creating a community through which established and emerging artists, educators and people drawn simply by the joy of natural dyeing can learn and practise together.
Jenai has also contributed to Sunshine Coast Council's arts ecology, including serving for several years on its Regional Arts Development Fund assessment panel.
Her own projects have received arts funding, and her work has featured within Council arts programs exploring textiles, natural dyeing, sustainability and slow fashion.
Selected Projects
Natural-Dyed Flag Installation — University of the Sunshine Coast
In collaboration with Sunshine Coast artist Anne Harris, Jenai invited natural dyers from Australia and around the world to contribute individually created squares of naturally dyed silk.
What began as a community arts project gathered extraordinary momentum as contributions arrived from across Australia, America and Europe.
More than 800 individual pieces ultimately formed a large-scale installation of naturally dyed flags, mounted outdoors at the University of the Sunshine Coast.
The project demonstrated the remarkable diversity of colour obtainable from natural materials while bringing together the work of a geographically dispersed community of natural dyers.
Hope Vale Bush Dye Collaboration — 2019
Jenai and artist Anne Harris collaborated with women artists from the Hopevale Arts and Culture Centre in Far North Queensland, sharing natural-dye processes while exploring locally available plants and colour.
The collaboration supported the participating artists to draw colour directly from their own environment and incorporate these processes into their own unique artworks, strengthening the relationship between material, creative practice and Country.
Works arising from the collaboration were subsequently represented in exhibitions including Wubuul Bui at Artisan Gallery in Brisbane and the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair.
Baptising Blue — 2019
Jenai's solo exhibition, Baptising Blue, grew from a four-week residency at the Arts and Ecology Centre, Maroochy Bushland Botanic Gardens, followed by a solo exhibition, with the project supported by Sunshine Coast Council.
The residency and exhibition provided an opportunity for Jenai to focus deeply on her own creative relationship with Indigo and botanical colour.
Baptising Blue brought together the accumulated knowledge, experimentation and artistic practice that have made blue — and Indigo in particular — such a defining thread within her work
Passing knowledge forward
After more than forty years of working with plants, fibres and natural colour, Jenai remains deeply interested in teaching.
Her work at SATORI EARTH reflects a broader intention than simply learning a textile technique.
It is an invitation to slow down, work with our hands, understand the materials growing around us, and rediscover the extraordinary creative possibilities contained within the natural world.
As a member of the SATORI EARTH Faculty, Jenai will contribute workshops, masterclasses and evolving projects across botanical textile art, natural pigments, Indigo and fibre practice.
Her work will also begin quite literally in the SATORI EARTH garden, where Indigo and other pigment-producing plants will be cultivated for future creative practice.
Learn with Jenai at SATORI EARTH
Botanical Textile Art • Natural Dyeing • Indigo • Shibori • Botanical Printing • Fibre & Cloth • Slow Textile Practice
Jenai's first series of SATORI EARTH workshops and masterclasses is currently being developed and will be announced soon.
Join the SATORI EARTH mailing list to receive upcoming Faculty workshops, masterclasses and events.