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decoding colors

how many colors in each poem?
where are the rainbows?

blues greens golds
yellows browns chartreuse
pink reds and maroons

color decoding

workrooms now stilled

the swirling tasks

wound round

glowing as 

fluorescent sunshine

Farewell Fruitlands.  Thanks to all at Fruitlands and The Trustees and all that visited 'anything but drab' over the last six months.  So grateful. 

’anything but drab’ on view 
(4 more days) thru Sunday Nov 2
Fruitlands Museum,Harvard, MA
open Thursday to Sunday, 10am-4pm 

big thanks to Curator Christie Jackson
for inviting me to collaborate with her
& to make a project in a former
Shaker building 

--thanks to the Trustees ARC staff aka Archives
--thanks to Fruitlands Stewardship team
--thanks to all the behind the scenes Trustees staff & The Trustees
--thanks to Kate Wool for the stunning photographs
.
thanks to everyone that stopped by
to view the exhibition,
to fold paper into books,
to watch me dip my hands in an indigo dye bath,
to listen to poetry and
to hear us talk about color.

I'm so grateful. Thank you.

here from there

a 1974 pot luck dinner
with a neighbor’s
documentary film
The Shakers
.
many stops
steps in-between
linking Shakers
.
distilled into a 
10 minuture presentation
for Williamstown Cultural District
Monday Oct 27, 7-8:30pm
at Images Cinema
.
.
Join me & 2 other artists
for talks & discussion & snacks

color mandate

dive into each color
drop into rooms clad with sky
stand on floors ochred

……

Join us tomorrow October 18
for a ‘colorful conversation'

Curator Christie Jackson
and I will be talking color
at Fruitlands Museum
2pm-3:30pm
.
.
.
Fruitlands Museum
102 Prospect Hill Road
Harvard MA 01451

Please join Curator Christie Jackson and myself on Saturday October 18th at 2:00pm for a ‘Colorful Conversation’ at Fruitlands Museum, Harvard, MA.

We will discuss the Shakers and the use of color–paints & dyes–had in making these two exhibitions, as well as, view the two exhibitions currently on view at Fruitlands Museum, ‘a good many hands‘ (curated by Jackson) and ‘anything but drab’ (installation by Brece Honeycutt).

Fruitlands Museum, 102 Prospect Hill Road, Harvard, MA.  More info HERE

images by Kate Wool

yesterday Composer Kevin Seigfried
led a group of us, singing and walking
up the Shaker Holy Hill at the former
Harvard Shaker site

where songs manifested into mantras
golden trumpets sounded off
gold chains circled stones

alerted to warbling anthems, singing
'A Short Prayer for a Sinking World’
written for an 1849 cholera epidemic
sung now with "no doubting or unbelieving spirit"

this morning reading the new Vitra Design Museum 
catalog for 'The Shakers A World in the Making'--
“We must grapple with the difference between ourselves
and others and unmake the distance between within and
without to find solidarity in times of division.” [pg 17]

Thanks to the BASSG for organizing yesterday’s memorable magical
walk with Kevin Seigfried, his singers and community. 

start of the studio day
a minute minute collage

tear out first image that 
strikes my fancy
quickly find 2 or 3 more
glue together
pin on wall

now gathered 
into summer’s fullness

coerce color

coerce color from walls
onto stilled photographs

unexpected vibrancy
cool crisp containment

palest pink pegs
perfectly aligned

kerchief so finely woven
becomes a cloud

goldenrod echoed
chrome yellow

vibrant victorious
trip to the sun

ice blocks stacked high
palest blue indigo sky

geranium red dresses
azure blue aprons

slate drab bonnet ruffles
cobalt vests

golden butternut
great coats

buildings on a map

…………

Walking through Williamstown, MA, Look UP!! Banners by local artists grace the downtown streets! See all the banners, HERE.

Eyes on Art Town banner exhibition is a collaborative project of The Town of Williamstown, Williamstown Cultural District and Williamstown Chamber of Commerce. The banner exhibition is made possible with grant funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

madder cochineal annatto sappanwood, 2025, watercolor, ink, threads, photographs, arches paper

Join me this Saturday 20 September at Fruitlands Museum (Harvard, MA) from 11am-3pm for a drop-in dye demonstration —indigo, madder & goldenrod.  

I’ll be outside the former Shaker office, where you can view my installation ‘anything but drab’ inside.

an excerpt below of my poem ‘any color they could dye’ using dye names from historic dye books—



any color they could dye
 
reds of--
pink with French plums
cochineal and crimson
rose pink to peachwood
reds of pink paleness
pink white primroses
barnwood red with beetroot
scarlet berries with geranium
 
oranges
golden
turmeric
orange
 
yellows
of bark
of gold 
of brown
of yellow green
 
greens
wood green and yellow green
invisible and deep green
chem bottle and deep grass green
olive and pea and myrtle green
slate and blue green
 
blues
a Spanish fly
a blue fawn
a magazine blue
a chemical magazine
a royal a slate and a Prussian blue
a bluesoblack
a bluesodrab
 
drabs
drab drab drabs
reddish red
sandy
silver 
sage
salmon and dove
beavers and gloves
drab drab drab
 
purples
puce purple and crimson
deep purple deep maroon
logwood lavender lilac
fast purple fast maroon
 
browns
a very fast fawn brown
olive with claret brown
coffee chocolate cinnamon brown
damson

blacks
dutch black
imperial weighted
 
greys
of bark
of liver
of dark smoke
and batwings
and doves

indigo | goldenrod | madder | installation view photograph by Kate Wool

Fruitlands Museum, 102 Prospect Hill Road, Harvard, MA 01451 | 978.456.3924

“We look closely at the magic mirror, stand back from it, try to empty our minds of all else, strive to grasp the meaning of every colour, each one of which brings to mind memories of past impressions, which arrange themselves in an architecture as immortal and varied as the colours on the canvas, and build up our imagination, a landscape.”


images for ‘prismatic utopia’ taken at New Lebanon, Fruitlands, Hancock, Canterbury, Winterthur & many studios in between
 
[quote | Marcel Proust on Art and Literature 1896-1919,’ translated by Sylvia Townsend Warner]

Mother Ann Lee
29 February 1736-8 September 1784


Cosmic feminist karma
Inspired when first in,
When women invited in.
A broadsheet to marketh the course,
to report.
Lace repurposed, given new life, libertiees,
infused with psychedelic indigo.
A spectrum instructed with solemnity
Occasionally, light flickers.
 
 
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.
 
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 & Miriam Cantor-Stone]

[Mother Ann Lee gravestone, Niskeyuna, NY aka Watervliet]

[sun in morning sky with rings]

[image from ‘An Essay on Symbolic Colors’ Frederic de Portal and W.S.Iman]