Julia Vanderpool (provided)
When Eliza Lucas Pinckney took up the idea of growing and extracting indigo in the 1740s, developing the dye into a major Lowcountry export, it’s unlikely she ever imagined the future. Nearly 300 years later, in 2025, an artist named Julia Vanderpool is living and working in her home studio in Mount Pleasant, where Eliza once cultivated indigo. The subdivision, Snee Farm, where Vanderpool resides, was formerly one of Charles Pinckney's seven plantations.
During the 18th century, Snee Farm was a 715-acre plantation and the country home for Eliza and Charles. The land was developed in the 1970s, but a 28-acre remnant was saved by the Historic Society and became the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site.
Vanderpool is pursuing an active career using shibori, a traditional Japanese tie-dyeing technique. She uses white cottons, silks and linens to transform simplicity into head-turning wearable art. Some garments are thrifted finds; others are sourced from a company that specializes in cloth and clothing suitable for dyeing.
Eliza, a household name in Charleston as a historic entrepreneur, was focused on the botany, science and marketability of indigo. She was highly successful in her effort to establish a significant industry. Julia notes that the arduous process of extracting indigo from the leaves relied on the endurance of the enslaved people forced into the work. Although Eliza tested dyeing, her business did not involve textiles. Because indigo was coveted by the British Empire, it was produced in the Lowcountry, formed into “cakes” mixed with crushed and burned oyster shells, and shipped to England.
Just a few years ago, Vanderpool became fascinated with the history of indigo in relation to Charleston and her home “on the Farm” for more than 20 years.
“I am intrigued by the deep history of indigo and the fact that it was grown and processed right here on the land where I now live. I feel the old oaks dancing with Spanish moss whispering to me about what happened here centuries ago,” she said.
Drawn to the color, she experimented with tie-dyeing clothes with rich, deep blue tones contrasting with the bright white of tied-off fabric. She first created Maui-style shirts for her husband, Anthony, and sundresses for each of her four daughters as Christmas gifts. They were thrilled with their one-of-a-kind dresses. She also made countless silk scarves and handkerchiefs as gifts, and soon her work began to spread around town.
Vanderpool eventually began exhibiting and selling her work and more recently started teaching workshops in natural indigo dyeing. She sells wearable art at Charleston markets and neighborhood fairs, finding that her dresses, tank tops, T-shirts and scarves sell as fast as she produces them.
Julia was already an artist when she engaged with indigo. Her earliest interest was in photography.
“I was 15 when my parents gave me my first Nikon while we were living in Italy for three years, when my dad was stationed in Rome at the NATO Defense College and later in Vicenza with NATO on an Italian installation,” she said. “We were stationed in Charleston twice, once when I was very young and later when I was in college. Anthony and I were married here in 1994. We moved back in 1996 and raised all four of our daughters in Mount Pleasant. Being an Air Force brat, Charleston became the family home.”
She took her first black-and-white photography class as a high school junior and went on to a fulfilling career as a photojournalist. After taking a 30-year break to raise her family and manage her husband’s chiropractic practice, she reconnected with making art by signing up for an unlimited membership at Redux Contemporary Art Center to use the darkroom. That decision soon expanded into taking every available art class, including silk-screen printing.
Joining Redux began as a way to teach one of her daughters film-developing techniques, but Vanderpool later explored making serigraphs — silk-screen prints using photographs she had taken decades earlier.
Encouraged by an artist friend in 2024, she successfully applied for a South Carolina Arts Commission Emerging Artist Grant. After completing the six-month program, she produced eight new images, which she exhibited at Redux in June 2025 in a show titled Greyscale to Chroma: Vibrant Silkscreen Prints Reimagining Black and White Narratives.
Today she continues to create serigraphs while also spending hours making textile art.
Julia’s indigo-related activities this fall include:
- Redux: Indigo Dyeing Workshop, Saturday, Sept. 20, 11 a.m.–1 p.m. (sign up at www.reduxstudios.org.
- Park Circle: Harvest Festival, Oct. 18, 4–7 p.m., Olde Village of North Charleston (Vanderpool will have a booth)
- Goose Creek Artists Guild: Artist Talk, Oct. 21, 6 p.m., featuring an indigo interactive session
- MOJA Juried Art Exhibition: Featuring a photograph and serigraph, Sept. 26–Nov. 3, Avery Research Center at the College of Charleston. Closing reception Nov. 2 at City Gallery.