She can turn rusted trash into artistic treasure – and she will show you how you can too.

Teresa Paschke, assistant professor of art and design, will give a demonstration on how to use metal as a fabric dye at the Brunnier Art Museum at 2 p.m. Sunday.

“[Paschke] will show us … practical ways to dye objects with things you have in your home,” said Rachel Hampton, information and collections manager for University Museums.

“The natural dyes I use are fairly unconventional,” Paschke said. “I use found metal objects and hardware to create patinas that I then transfer to fabric.”

Sometimes the objects are already rusted, she said, and sometimes she puts the objects in tubs of a water and vinegar solution to speed up the rusting process.

Paschke said one of her favorite objects to use is a metal barbecue grill she found on a camping trip.

Other objects she has worked with in the past include “lots of washers,” “rusted mufflers,” a double bedspring and “things that don’t even have a name.”

To dye the fabrics, she said she uses both iron rust, which produces a brown-black color, and copper oxide, which produces a green shade.

One way she uses the rusts, Paschke said, is by wrapping vinegar-soaked fabrics around rusted poles, to create “a subtle design that would be variegated.”

If she wants a more even color, she uses a dye bath of rust solution.

“What I like is that it’s very unpredictable,” she said, “which is the fun part.”

“The color is very seductive, too,” she added.

Paschke said she has used found objects in her work “for years and years” and dying with rust “is a way to pull that interest into my studio work.”

Plus, the found objects have a reference to the past, she said.

“A lot of my work is about memory, history,” Paschke explained.

She learned the process of doing “overall patterning” with rust while in graduate school, but started to experiment with them about six years ago “to get more specific impressions.”

Those experiments led her to the processes she uses today.

Three of her dyed pieces are currently on display in the Brunnier’s “Earth Tones I: Natural Dyes in Art” exhibit, which runs until Aug. 10.

Sara Kadolph, guest curator of the exhibit and associate professor of textiles and clothing, said she also occasionally uses metal in her dyeing.

“I sometimes add bits of old iron, copper pipe or bare wire, aluminum foil, brass nails or tarnished silver to shift the color,” she said. “I am currently dyeing a t-shirt with purple cabbage, copper wire and parsley using contact dyeing.”

Paschke’s demonstration is being presented by the Brunnier in conjunction with the natural dyes exhibit.

“I don’t really consider this a natural dye process until I sit down and think about it,” Paschke said. It’s using “dye that nature creates, or has the capacity to create. I just speed up the process.”