Cara Marie Piazza

Cara Marie Piazza Founder of Calyx Studios — a NYC natural dye house creating custom textiles for Coach, Jason Wu, Mara Hoffman, Eileen Fisher & more. Workshops + commissions.

Color from botanicals, minerals & food waste. Industry meets alchemy. Please email [email protected] for all inquiries. Thank you!

The Fifth Room is open.An embodied, sensory event series. Designed to give grief somewhere to go and the nervous system ...
10/08/2026

The Fifth Room is open.

An embodied, sensory event series. Designed to give grief somewhere to go and the nervous system a place to rest.

This fall, and are collaborating on a workshop series called The Fifth Room, bringing together instructors, artists, and community to explore transforming grief through ritual and craft-based practices.

Drawing on John Coltrane's The Coltrane Circle, the mathematics of jazz, and Five Element theory, the series explores the alchemical theme of Solve et Coagula — to dissolve and reform. We believe grief works in a spiral, leading us through transformation but never quite back to the place where we started.

In this series we will gather at Calyx Studios Thursday nights and Sunday afternoons, each session is unique. We will have workshops ranging from crafting your own herbal preparations to painting your astrological compass with natural dyes. A ceremonial grief circle and braiding prayers as a form transforming material memory.

Everything in the world feels tender and a little scary right now, so we wanted to offer a place to occupy your hands in community while creating beauty. The act of making, and making with the spirit of plant material is an invitation to slow down and connect to practice.

The series begins on Nov 1, 2026, and ends on Dec 6, 2026. You can purchase your spots via www.calyxstudios.com

Swipe through for the line up of incredible teachers and practitioners.

Guest Teacher - Experiencing the Colors Of Puglia Natural Dye Retreat Emilia Cianci Sometimes when I travel, I tap into ...
07/17/2026

Guest Teacher - Experiencing the Colors Of Puglia Natural Dye Retreat

Emilia Cianci

Sometimes when I travel, I tap into a current that carries me. Some might call this reckless. Most of the time, it connects me to exactly the people I was meant to find.

Emilia and I connected on Instagram a month before my trip to Italy. I had left one evening in Puglia untethered, no accommodation booked, just a quiet trust that something would work out. She saw a story I posted and invited me, no questions asked, to stay with her, her mother, and friends at Terra Elaya. I booked a train, took a taxi, and was there by evening. Her mother welcomed me with open arms, called us crazy kids, and offered me a cup of tea. The second I arrived, I knew I had found a kindred sister.

One of our retreat days we will travel together to Terra Elaya, a sanctuary and land project devoted to the regeneration of soil, spirit, and right relationship with the earth, situated among old olive and pomegranate trees just kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea. Emilia's partner Scott Gallant, a permaculture designer with fifteen years of experience, will walk us through their syntropic orchard, a living mosaic of agroforestry and native Macchia Mediterranea. Woven through this day, Emilia will open a doorway into the myth and mythology of the plants we are working with.
Emilia Cianci is Italian-born with roots across the Mediterranean basin. Her practice weaves ritual and ceremony, somatic work, ancestral healing, herbalism, and soul work, held in devotion to the feminine essence and the path of beauty.

She will also lead us in an introduction to Sacred Plants of the Mediterranean on October 11th, a two-hour workshop exploring the ritual, healing, and mythological uses of Mediterranean plants across cultures, with an embodied and relational approach.

Link in bio to join us in Puglia, October 9-18.

Naturally dyed linen tufted cushion for the  Scroll Bench.Dyed with chestnut, calx and iron. Photos by
05/19/2026

Naturally dyed linen tufted cushion for the Scroll Bench.

Dyed with chestnut, calx and iron.

Photos by

SOLUTIOA cross-disciplinary exhibition featuring work byAlexis Stiteler, Cara Marie Piazza (Calyx Studios), Cadis and Mi...
05/12/2026

SOLUTIO

A cross-disciplinary exhibition featuring work by
Alexis Stiteler, Cara Marie Piazza (Calyx Studios), Cadis and Midden Projects

Opening Reception: Thursday, May 14, 2026 | 6–9 PM
Open Studio Days: Friday, May 15 & Saturday, May 16, 2026 | 12 -6pm

Location: Calyx Studios, 435 South 5th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211 - Studio 1 ( Buzzer one or the open garage door - weather permitting )

This May, Calyx Studios opens its doors to Solutio, an exhibition of three practices embracing the slowness of material exploration. The natural dyes of Cara Marie Piazza (Calyx Studios), the drawings of Alexis Stiteler, lighting sculpture of Cadis, and the furniture of McKeever Donovan (Midden Projects) all share a faith in patient transformation — in the moment a substance loosens its hold on what it was and becomes something else. What they share is a faith in slow transformation — in the moment a substance loosens its hold on what it was and becomes something else.

Solutio takes its name from the alchemical stage of dissolution — the deliberate breaking-down of a substance so that something new might emerge. Across dye vats, drawings, and forged objects, the exhibition traces a through-line of material transmutation. Plants rendered into color, observation distilled into line, wood, metal and resins shaped by hand and time into form. Each practice operates by its own slow logic, yet each is grounded in a shared attention to source, process, and the small alchemies of making.

Limited Edition L/S tees available in person 14-16th, online goes live the 17th.

Rosemary is one of my favorite plants, one that provides medicine to remember.The Greeks wove it into garlands for schol...
05/04/2026

Rosemary is one of my favorite plants, one that provides medicine to remember.

The Greeks wove it into garlands for scholars and mourners alike — a herb that sharpened the mind and honored the dead, a thread connecting what we hold onto and what we let go. It sat on wedding tables and funeral altars, in bridal bouquets and burial shrouds, marking every threshold worth remembering.

It’s not simply an herb for the soup pot.

In the dye bath, rosemary provides beautiful subtle hues. Its color is herbaceous, alive — soft yellow-greens, muted olives, gentle warm tans that breathe rather than shout. Like bay, it shape-shifts with a tanning base, your mordant, the pH of your water. Iron pulls it toward smoky sage. Alum lets it stay golden. The same sprig, steeped in different baths, gives different colors.

On May 9th, this Saturday, I’m teaching a live online class built around rosemary and bay — two sacred Mediterranean herbs explored through two tannin bases and a range of modifiers. We’ll work slowly and ,ethnically to learn how these plants can provide a spectrum of color.

$115 • Approx 3 hours on Zoom • Recording included 12pm–3pm EST

Link in bio to reserve your place.

Can’t make it live? No worries — it will be recorded and you can watch anytime.

Save the date: May 14th - 16thSOLUTIOA cross-disciplinary exhibition featuring work byAlexis Stiteler, Cara Marie Piazza...
04/28/2026

Save the date: May 14th - 16th

SOLUTIO
A cross-disciplinary exhibition featuring work by
Alexis Stiteler, Cara Marie Piazza (Calyx Studios), Cadis and Midden Projects
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 14, 2026 | 6–9 PM
Open Studio Days: Friday, May 15 & Saturday, May 16, 2026 | 12 -6pm
Location: Calyx Studios, 435 South 5th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211 - Studio 1 ( Buzzer one or the open garage door - weather permitting )

This May, Calyx Studios opens its doors to Solutio, an exhibition of three practices embracing the slowness of material exploration. The natural dyes of Cara Marie Piazza (Calyx Studios), the drawings of Alexis Stiteler, lighting sculpture of Cadis, and the furniture of McKeever Donovan (Midden Projects) all share a faith in patient transformation — in the moment a substance loosens its hold on what it was and becomes something else. What they share is a faith in slow transformation — in the moment a substance loosens its hold on what it was and becomes something else.

Solutio takes its name from the alchemical stage of dissolution — the deliberate breaking-down of a substance so that something new might emerge. Across dye vats, drawings, and forged objects, the exhibition traces a through-line of material transmutation. Plants rendered into color, observation distilled into line, wood, metal and resins shaped by hand and time into form. Each practice operates by its own slow logic, yet each is grounded in a shared attention to source, process, and the small alchemies of making.

Please RSVP to [email protected].

Beverages sponsored in kind by

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