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‘Anything but drab’ opens today at Fruitlands Museum in their historic Shaker Office Building.
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Just as nineteenth century Shakers used contemporary paint manuals and pigments, chrome yellow and Prussian blue, they consulted contemporary dye books: Elijah Bemis’ The Dyer’s Companion (New Haven, CT 1815) and Molony’s Masterpiece on wool, silk and cotton dyeing (Lowell, MA 1837).
 
Dye recipes fill the pages of a mid-19th century Sister’s book from the Harvard Shaker Community. More colors than one can imagine. Dye books speak of possibilities, tantalizing tints of deep dark indigo, rosy reds of madder, geranium scarlet cochineal, dove grey drab and London brown.  Dyeing is science, measuring, mixing and timing. Dyeing is days of preparation: grinding, heating, boiling, dipping and dipping, rinsing and more rinsing and finally drying.  Color comes at times fast and at others relentlessly slow, and only revealed when the cloth is completely dry. 
 
Painted in layers of watercolors and inks, crisscrossed like a warp and weft or striated light lines streaming into a room, Honeycutt’s accordion book anything but drab sits on a Prussian blue Shaker work table, recalls a bolt of dyed cloth or an unfolded Shaker map and speaks to the root of accordion, accord. Each fold builds on another, joined in unity and harmony, an accordance.  Around the room, Shaker umbrella swifts, reels to wind yarn into balls, constructed by Brethren and used by Sisters, further demonstrate the duality, the equality, the accordance.  
 
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Across from the Shaker Office building on Fruitlands grounds sits the Seasonal Gallery with the exhibition "a good many hands" Shaker Communities Woven through Word, Image and Object curated by Senior Curator Christie Jackson.

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Fruitlands Museum, 102 Prospect Hill Road, Harvard, MA, 01451

Thursday - Sunday, 10am-4pm.

“A Journal Devoted especially to The Blue Dye Department [New Lebanon] commenced April 22, 1839 by Betsey Coply + Abigail Crosman and their First Year of Dyeing”

I am thrilled to be presenting at the annual Shaker Forum (April 25-27) Enfield Shaker Museum (Enfield, NH).

This year I will read poetry constructed from research—about hydropower & labor, maps & buildings, chrome green ‘bedsteads, biers, barrows, bowers,’ a roster of dye colors and indigo, taken from the Dye Journal started on this day in 1839.

a collection of yellows
a survey of yellowed


swifts
chair backs
painted pages
dippers
buckets
Brethren workshop
stair wells and walls
& a former Shaker Office building

‘anything but drab’ opens inside that yellow office building on May 1 at Fruitlands Museum

[swifts, chair back, dipper and bucket Shaker Museum | New Lebanon; book page from 'Shaker Furniture Makers' by Jerry Grant & Douglas Allen; Brethren's Workshop and stairs Enfield Shaker Museum; former Harvard Shaker community office structure now at Fruitlands Museum]

Madder Red
Crimson Red
Scarlet Crimson
French Plum
Beetroot Red
Spiny Lobster
Barnwood Red
Peachwood Red

Fast Yellow
Woollen Yellow
Bark yellow
Gold Yellow
Dead Leaf Yellow
Ochre yellow
Lemon Yellow
Green Yellow

Orange yellow
Pale Orange
Apricot Orange
Tumeric Orange

21 March marks 
World Poetry Day &
International Color Day

The Shaker Sisters at Harvard MA recorded coloring (they wrote collouring) in their Journal.  Coloring meant dyeing. Dyeing is making color. Dyeing is possibility. 

This poem uses text from their Journal and will be part of an upcoming exhibition, ‘anything but drab’ at Fruitlands opening in May.

we collour
 
 
we color scarlet on stormy days
 
we color indigo when we are indefatigable
 
we color butternut   roses blooming abundantly
 
we color prusy blue pick some pease
 
we color logwood    smelling lilacs
 
we color fancy blue to match azure skies
 
we color slate silk with sicily sumac to match slanted rain
 
we color blue spirits for drab woolens
 
we color cochineal pink roses
 
we color purple standard
 
we color considerable

A reading from the newly released
2024 Colour & Poetry:A Symposium VI

Chardin in Suburbia and Greyed

AND

It’s that time of year for the annual
Colour & Poetry: A Symposium VII
Friday March 21  2025 via zoom
Free and Registration HERE
 
Ruth Siddall / Paul Smith / Vaishali Prazmari / Lavinia Harrington / Lujain Tamer-Mansour/ Jordan Verdes / Liz Rideal / Johny Meghames / Rob Kesseler / Jenny Ihn / Scott Brown / Liz Lawes / Sharon Morris/ Yannis Ziogas / Christine Kirubi / Fiona McLees / Roman Sheppard Dawson / Stella Kajombo / Liz Harrington / Jasmir Creed / Lesley Sharpe / Sara Choudhrey / Lucy Mayes / Brece Honeycutt / Tian Rossana Wong/ 

At 12:30 EST, my talk “collour scarlet on a stormy day” poems from Prismatic Utopia

note: on the opposite page is the work of Sarah Pettitt

somewhere between
today & tomorrow
on that illusive Leap Day
Mother Ann Lee was born
29 February 1736 — 8 September 1784

Mother Ann Lee embodied cosmic feminist karma
bringing a new religion into the world
founded on principles so radical that they endured persecutions 

One could say her broadsheet was verbal;
she being illiterate to written words
yet literate in all realms cosmic
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The written  Testimonies of her contemporary believers 
and works of the later visionists-
scribes themselves of hearts and leaves
and maps and flowers and trees-- 
scripted scrolls brought down from spirits’ energies spoke to her cosmic energy. 

[excerpt from meetinghouse, Brece Honeycutt and Miriam Cantor-Stone]

[image, detail An Emblem of the Heavenly Sphere by Polly Collins, 1854]

[image, detail, From Holy Mother Wisdom…To Eldress Dana or Mother by Miranda Barber, 1848]

a scheme of colours

a tree of love, a tree of life

a book unfolds, an accordion, an accord

a work in progress for Fruitlands Museum

sun drifting into rooms
onto walls gleaming with varnish
onto chrome yellow cabinets 
onto reddish yellow floors
 
warmth emanates
energizing yellow
rises out of woodwork
rises into hearts


—excerpt from ROYGBIV poem & work in progress for ‘anything but drab’ coming to Fruitlands Museum May 2025

color 
on pages
in pigments
in dyes
in jars
on yards of thread
 
been reading Shaker 
manuscripts account books
and journals of work performed
 
been looking at collected
colors in jars
 
been working on a new book
project needing a rainbow of
threads
 

I SAY: Women Artists and the Words They Use
February 7 - March 7, 2025, The Hotchkiss School

Fern Apfel, Lesley Dill, Louise Eastman and the Victory Garden Collective, Madge Evers, Guerillia Girls, Jenny Holzer, Brece Honeycutt, Corita Kent, Melanie Mowinski, Leslie Roberts, Linda Stein, Tiny Pricks Project and historical objects. Curated by Joan Baldwin, Curator of Special Collections. 

justest war, charcoal, graphite, tea, earth, pastel watercolor on paper, 50″ x 40″

“The worst peace is better than the justest war…….”

mending
 
a wellworn language
stray bits of sock yarn
scatter shot stitches
holding for now
beloved trousers
mended
 
these darned socks won my heart
a shared language
mended by Carmelite nuns
from Sheila Hicks’ collection
 
[Hicks image from ‘Sheila Hicks Weaving as Metaphor, 2006]
 
seek out Katrina Rodabaugh for her upcoming class ’On the Mend’