Arts Thread

Rachel Dana
Textiles MFA

Parsons School of Design

Graduates: 2025

Specialisms: Textiles / Textile Innovation/Textile Art / Textiles - Weave

My location: New York, United States

rachel-dana ArtsThread Profile
Parsons School of Design

Rachel Dana

rachel-dana ArtsThread Profile

First Name: Rachel

Last Name: Dana

University / College: Parsons School of Design

Course / Program: Textiles MFA

Graduates: 2025

Specialisms: Textiles / Textile Innovation/Textile Art / Textiles - Weave

My Location: New York, United States

About

Rachel Dana is a Brooklyn-based textile artist with over 20 years of experience working with plants. Her career includes roles in nurseries, farms, botanical illustration, and ten years as a pastry chef. She then became a land steward in Massachusetts, where she grew over 40 varieties of garlic and deepened her understanding of local ecosystems. It was there that she began foraging plant dyes, researching Japanese Knotweed rhizomes, spinning wool, and blending her love for nature with her evolving textile practice. She holds a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and recently completed an MFA in Textiles at Parsons School of Design.

Seeds are precious vessels preserving genetic material and world histories. This work explores human-nature entanglement through seed morphology and dispersal mechanisms. Using seeds, foraged materials and traditional crafts—beading, spinning, dyeing, weaving, felting—the pieces honor collective memory and create new life forms expressing transformation, migration, and survival across time.