Books

setting the table
for new structures
for projects and places
and paper and poems
with color and watercolor
and natural dyes

drab drab drab 

reddish drab
sandy drab
silver drab
sage drab
salmon drab
dove drab
beaver drab
glove drab


reading old dye books
the name tells all

"Imagine. Colours of the past, escaping from the pages of old dye and pattern books. Persian blue, Raven, dainty blue, pomegranate flower, spiny lobster, winesoup, dove breast, golden wax, grass green, green sand, rotten olive, modest plum, agate...finding their way to streets of our cities, enlivening all we wear, all allied to dissipate the bleakness of the times."

From Dominique Cardon's introduction to 'The Dyer's Handbook Memoirs on Dyeing by a French Gentleman-Clothier in the Age of Enlightenment' 
[Oxbow Books, 2016, pgs xi-xii]

+technicolor additions to Edward Deming Andrews text about dyes used by the Shakers at Watervliet 

working on  prototype for
an upcoming project
 
thanks Josef Albers
“Why colored paper instead
of pigment and paint”
 
-paper provides innumerable colors
-sources are easily accessible
   (HTSI magazine)
--makes an inexpensive paper ‘palette’
-unnecessary mess, quick easy juxtaposition
--no spoiled or paint mixing failures
--no big equipment, but paste and cutter
--no drying time
--ease of solving problems
 
[from Josef Albers, ‘Interaction of Color:
50th Anniversary Collection,’ Yale University Press
2013, pgs. 6-7]

looking for brightneess
in rainbows and revision structures
on hand knit shawls dyed with goldenrod,
gathered at wasteplaces
stitched into circles emanating sunlight

“Color is space.” 
Ethel  Adnan


“Color is an essential part of construction.”
Elizabeth Burns-Meyer


.madder .cochineal.goldenrod.indigo.logwood

[‘The Beauty of Light:  Interviews with Ethel Adnan,’ Etel Adnan & Laure Adler translated by Ethan Mitchell, Nightboat Books]

[Burns-Meyer from ‘The Book of Colour Concepts,’ Alexandra Loske and Sarah Lowengard, Taschen Books]

SkyDay Residency Report
Bascom Lodge 13 October

a small handheld book
folded from one sheet
of Fabriano paper
holds colors within
a greyed horizon --

“So mountains are languages
and languages are mountains.”
Etal Adnan from 'Surge’

To live at the horizon becomes
larger than mountain & sky

where poems reside

on lichen lined limbs
within sodden forest floors
on mountains, in valleys
in between clouds and sky

color from
the valley
the greyed sky
the pelting rain
dawn dusk

Thank you Monika Sosnowsk and Peter Dudek
for inviting me up to Bascom Lodge for a swell day
of looking, painting and writing.  Thanks to the 
dinner guests that listened while I read Anne Carson,
Ada Limon, Thoreau and a few of my poems.

[images of residency book, early orange dawn sky, atop the memorial tower, the valley, the lodge, the rain at the end of the day]

chromatics:  relating to or produced by color

village maps rendered in vibrant colors
garments dyed any color of the rainbow
.
.
research forming into chapters
guided by color,
dye baths and paint pots

this is what research looks like-notes on a wall, folders on a table, books stacked high

this is how research is defined as a noun: the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions

this is how research is defined as a verb: investigate systematically

looking forward to presenting my research Prismatic Utopia at the Deerfield Fall Forum ‘A Rich and Varied Palette: Coloring New England’s Past’ 13/14 September.

“Historic Deerfield’s 2024 Fall Forum, A Rich and Varied Palette: Coloring New England’s Past, convenes a group of leading researchers and scholars to explore the vast subject of color and its history. Research and publication in the history of color has been growing in recent decades, but few studies have examined color’s impact on specific cultural regions, such as New England. The program’s lectures will focus on the diverse topics of global colorants and textiles, lithoprints in 1840s New England, painted furniture at the Bath Academy, japanned furniture, Shakers’ color use and meanings, New England’s textile bleaching industries, chrome yellow and pink as pigments, and the paints and finishes of the Rockingham (Vermont) meeting house.”

More info HERE for in person or virtual registration.

Thanks to Merriam Webster for the definitions and to Historic Deerfield for the opportunity.  

today marks, literally,
making the first mark
in a new journal
finished exactly a year ago
at Backyard Art Camp

the old journal
swollen with--
observations
to-do lists
calendars
paintings
musings
collages

the new journal’s
blank pages
await
marks
& fullness

Backyard Art Camp takes place in just a few weeks
under a tent in the backyard of writer artist bookmaker
Suzi Banks Baum.  There are two sessions
and each has just one spot left.  

I can’t wait to make past paper and then
construct a new Coptic stitch book.  We make
other types of books as well.  Message her 
HERE for info if you are interested.

five summers ago
harvested dahlias
stuck between sheets of paper
simmered, steamed
 
stacks of silhouettes, waited
suddenly, this summer,
their sense seeped in
 
was it seeing the blots of
Mary Gartside, seeking
flower essence through color?
 
fifty seven washed with
gouaches and watercolors
Inks of—daffodils, pine cones,
black walnuts, marigolds

Thanks to Alexandra Loske for alerting me to Gartside.

Her book, Mary Gartside:
Abstract Visions of Color at Thomas Heneage Books

Thanks to Naumkeag for the Artist Residency in 2019
where the dahlias were gathered.

Simultaneous
Synchronicity
Shaker Color
Sonia Delaunay
Sunrising
 
morning reading of Delaunay’s 
“magnetic language of colors”
“transcribing the poem into colors”
in Pascal Rousseau’s essay
 
“Not images, or objects in the 
traditional sense, but colours, lines
sensations, feelings. Pure inspiration.”
Sonia Delaunay
 
“And when light expresses itself fully,
everything is coloured.” Guillaume Apollinaire

[quotes and Delaunay images from
Sonia Delaunay, Tate Publishing, 2014]
 
[stack of shaker boxes from JKRussel Antiques]

text & typeface

words on the side of the road
as in the Shaker “Wayside Pulpit”
words found in advertisements 
as in the work of Corita Kent
words about to be printed
at Melanie Mowinski’s studio
words printed, read, used, perused
aptly, just begin

--Wayside Pulpit included in 'Unexpected Shaker' a pop-up show in Kinderhook, NY until 8/25
--Corita Kent, ‘bell bound’ found in ‘Corita Kent and the Language of Pop’
--Melanie Mowinski, Press:LetterPress