Mariah Palmer is a natural dye artist and textile designer and Local Earth is her studio located in the mountains near Bozeman, Montana. Her art practice is deeply rooted in relationship with the natural world.

She grew up in the mountains near Sun Valley, Idaho, and spent most of her waking hours outside. Her parents are her most influential teachers. They taught her the joy of creating and craftsmanship. Her father is a builder who creates one-of-a-kind art and furniture with reclaimed wood, and her late mother was a gardener and plant caretaker. She studied Clothing, Textiles, and Design at the University of Idaho. In 2016, she co-founded Wilder Goods which featured a carefully curated collection of local art, slow fashion and vintage goods. In that space, she began offering workshops, which sparked a move away from retail and into teaching and hosting workshops rooted in connecting to the land.

Over the past decade-plus, she has pieced together the school of her dreams by attending courses that centered around the local ecosystem, including ‘Master Naturalist’ through the Montana Outdoor Science School, ‘Resilient Homestead’ a permaculture course with Broken Ground—as well as various online and in-person natural dye courses with—The Dogwood Dyer, Maiwa School of Textiles, Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, and The Wild Pigment Project.

Lately, you can find her at her home studio outside Bozeman, Montana — collecting and growing plants for dyes on fabric, designing textiles and one-of-kind clothing, teaching workshops and making dances with her dance partner and local modern dance crew.