A!R | Plants as Fiber: Making Cordage from Dogbane

Join us at Ace Hotel Brooklyn for a hands-on fiber workshop led by designer, chef, and nature enthusiast Renee Baumann, exploring the ancient practice of transforming plants into handmade cordage.

Hand-extracting long bast fibers from plants like flax, dogbane and milkweed is an ancient practice and one of the earliest known methods of making fabric. In this workshop, you’ll get to try your hand at this transformative process and go home with some very special handmade cordage along with skills to connect to plants in a new way.

About the Program

This program is part of Gifts from the Earth, an exhibition by Phoebe Tran as part of our 2026 Artist-in-Residence program (A!R), presented by Ace Hotel Brooklyn × Field Meridians.

Gifts from the Earth is a living apothecary exploring our relationships with plants as sources of medicine, memory, and care. Guided by the ethos of Vietnamese folk medicine, the work approaches healing as knowledge cultivated through close attention to the landscapes we inhabit. In dialogue with the Potawatomi teachings on the gift economy shared by botanist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass, the installation asks: what changes when we understand the natural world not as a resource, but as a gift?

About Facilitator

Renee Baumann is a designer, chef, and nature enthusiast with a passion for wild plants and fungi. Trained as both an architect and a chef, Renee teaches workshops and techniques working with local fibers, with an emphasis on creating three dimensional forms from bioregional components. Her work varies from traditional basketry practices in cattail and willow to sculptural felt and spinning foraged fibers. Find more of her work @renee_makes_things on instagram.