Shakers

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

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.

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

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]