research

This week, I’ve been ‘touching Colours,’ to quote the first book seen–John Hoofnail’s 1764 ‘The Painter’s Companion –found in the amazing Stephen L. Wolf Collection at Historic Deerfield Memorial Library. 
 
Wolf owned and operated S. Wolf’s & Sons, a NYC family business began in 1869. He built the premier private library on all things color and paint and varnish and theory, including Newton, Syme, David Hay, George Field, Chevreul, Munsell, Burris-Meyer—just to name a few. 

I am so thankful for my Library Research Fellowship to use the Wolf Collection for my project Prismatic Utopia. Reading these books will further situate the Shaker’s cutting-edge use of color in the early 1800s, during the age of ‘harmonious colour.’
 
Images
--Field, Chromatic Equivalents 
--Hay, The Laws of Harmonious Colouing
--Kyan, Elements of Light
--Church, Colour
--Syme, Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours
--Hay, Nomenclature of Colours
--Masury’s Ready-made paints
--Chevreul, Des Couleurs
--Bacon, Theory of Colouring
--Field’s, Chromatography
--Hoofnail, The Painter’s Companion
 

Find more information on the Library Fellowships, here

a scheme of colors

A project; a contrivance; a plan of something to be done; a design.  Thus we may say to form, a scheme, to lay a scheme, to contrive.

A representation of the aspects of the celestial bodies.

I’m scheming in colors.
I’m arranging folders.
I’m packing poems into suitcases.
I’m lining up little watercolor tins

I’ll be scheming in colors as a Library Research Fellow
at Historic Deerfield using their Wolf Color book collection

 [Moses Harris, ‘scheme of colours’ found in Alexandra Loske’s ‘The Book of Colour Concepts ]

[scheme definition 1828 Websters]

dive into each color

drop into rooms skyed
stand on floors ochred
wind swifts chromed
wheel barrows greened

impromptu

studio still lives
hilma postcards
pigment processes
morning quick collages
harris tweed color considerations

movement
 
 
rocking
             
rusty red cradles
painted the colors of fallen leaves
 
                                                                 
body
 
washed and enshrouded in
garment of celestial gold
 
                                                                                                
shimmers
 
shines, alights
 
 
hoist
 
onto chrome green bier
green symbolizes growth
 
 
movements            
not static
 
all is concert
 




last year after attending
Cradled at Shaker Museum,
I wrote the above poem, ‘movement’

Cradled is now on view at
Make Hauser & Wirth LA

image, The Shakers A World in the Making, Vitra Design Museum

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.

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]

juxtaposition
simultaneity

reading about the Royal Pavilion Brighton
pigments & colors reds pinks blues yellows
used across the ocean at the same time
by Shakers on interior building surfaces

techniques of David Ramsay Hay found in his 1828 book
“The Laws of Harmonious Colouring Adapted to House Painting’
‘architectural colour schemes’
personal taste
function of building
function of the room
geographical location
orientation to the light source

taking into account
surfaces materials and objects
unity balance and harmony
coloured furniture

Shakers used the
technology of the time
new pigments & concepts
a colour zeitgeist.a rainbow wave ridden

Thanks again to Dr. Alexandra Locke for your colour guidance and amazing new publication

[Hay information from Dr. Alexandra Loske’s new book, ‘The Royal Pavilion Brighton: A Regency Palace of Colour and Sensation’ as well as images from the book]

[Shaker gift drawings from ‘Heavenly Visions: Shaker Gift Drawings and Gift Songs’ curated by Frances Morin]

protoypting
prismatic
utopia

prototyping utopia coined by Sarah Margoilis-Pineo

prismatic utopia my ongoing poetry & prose/research project