Working from her studio in the Berkshires, printmaker Adriana Alexatos transforms donated and discarded fabrics through botanical dye, eco-printing and block printing, treating the land as collaborator and textile waste as material rather than problem.
The starting point for every piece Adriana Alexatos makes is something someone else was done with. Donated fabrics, secondhand cloth, reclaimed materials sourced sustainably: these are the foundations of her practice under the name gloomnbloom, a printmaking project that began as a personal passion and has grown into a small business built on deliberate, unhurried making.
The natural dyeing techniques she works with, eco-printing, plant hammering and dye baths drawn from homegrown colour, are processes that require patience and proximity to the land. Alexatos describes the land itself as her main collaborator, and that relationship shapes the whole practice. The pigments come from what can be grown or sourced locally; the cloth comes from what has already been used. Nothing enters the studio without a reason, and as little as possible leaves it as waste.
“If we can all take responsibility for our fashion waste reduction, even small steps, and there are so many, we can help create change,” she says.
That conviction is not declared loudly but embedded in every decision: the choice to source secondhand, to accept donations, to find new uses for material that would otherwise go to landfill. Her studio in the Berkshires is, as she describes it, the one place where she has complete control, and she uses that control entirely in the service of intention and use. The work becomes a form of resistance to overconsumption, made visible one piece of reclaimed cloth at a time.
The pieces that result carry their process in their surface: the particular mark of a botanical print, the depth of a dye bath, the hand of the block. Each one is made in small batches, which keeps the work connected to the materials and the maker rather than to any demand for scale.
Adriana Alexatos is a printmaker and founder of gloomnbloom, based in the Berkshires. Her practice centres on natural dye, block printing and sustainable textile work made from donated and reclaimed materials.
ARTIST LINKS
gloomnbloom on Etsy
@gloomnbloom
All works 2025 to 2026. Homegrown colour on sustainably sourced materials. Photography: Adriana Alexatos.
