color

Date : January 17, 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
 

mending

Category : Textiles
Date : January 8, 2025
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’

any color they could dye

Date : December 31, 2024
reds of cochineal and crimson
yellows of bark gold brown yellow green
greens invisible olive pea and myrtle
blues Prussian deep royal slate
drabs red sandy silver sage salmon and dove
purples crimson deep marron logwood lavender
browns fast damson fawn olive and claret
greys bark liver dark smoke batwings and doves

sending new year’s rainbows
joy and radiance for 2025
and thanks for your presence here

[studio doodle | work in progress for 2025 project
dye book from Harvard Shaker community]




circles

Category : Color, Textiles
Date : December 14, 2024

moon circles orbs spray


—The Sun and the Moon, Jean Picart le Doux
—A Thousand Wildflowers, Dom Robert
—Color Rhythms or Panelf F, Sonia Delaunay
—Seven Seas, Kiki Smith



details from Tapestries in Wall Power! Modern French Tapestry from the Mailer national, Paris at The Clark

drab drab drab

Date : November 25, 2024
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

color is

Date : October 29, 2024
“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]

banner

Date : September 11, 2024

banner: a long strip of cloth bearing a slogan or design, hung in a public place or carried in a demonstration or procession

these didn’t start as banners
yet, as a way to mark color on cloth
indigo, madder & coreopsis

later, hung on a Shaker cupboard
finally sewn into a series of twelve,
a perfect circle/perfectly round.
shaker studies 01-12
.
.
pardon the pun, but coming full circle,
dyeing these cloths lead me down a
path exploring the Shaker’s use of color

four years later, study 06 hangs as a banner in Williamstown, MA
and on Saturday, I will present my paper ’Prismatic Utopia,’ a threefold
exploration of Shaker color—practical, temporal & spiritual
at the Deerfield Fall Forum

Eyes on Art Town, 37 artists’ banners found in downtown Williamstown
A Rich & Varied Palette: Coloring New England’s Past at Historic Deerfield, 13/14 September

[a perfect circle/perfectly round. shaker studies.06, 2021 Indigo on muslin, coreopsis and indigo on found textile, dyed cotton thread]

The title is from a quote by two Shaker Brethren, Calvin Green & Seth Y. Wells (1823)—“A circle may be called a perfect circle when it is perfectly round.”


Arrival Day

Category : Shakers, Textiles
Date : August 6, 2024
Arrival Day, August 6, 1774

”Thus, after enduring the storms and dangers of the sea, in an old, leaky ship, which had been condemned as unfit for the voyage, and came very near foundering at sea, they all arrived safe in New York, on the sixth of August following. This account was attested by the captain, and by many witnesses, both believers and unbelievers.”

This year marks the 250th anniversary of Arrival Day, when Shaker founder Mother Ann Lee and eight followers arrived in the harbor of New York. Eventually, they would settle in Niskayuna (Albany, NY).

Mother Ann Lee described as ‘clothed with the sun.”



“Appendix: A Brief History of the Rise and Progress of The United Society,” written by Calvin Green and Benjamin S. Youngs, in the 1855 ‘The Testimony of Christ’s Second Appearing.’


poetry

Date : June 11, 2024
“Painting is a form of poetry
Colors are words
Their reflections rhythms.
The completed painting,
a completed poem.”

Sonia Delaunay
[from Kunst Please podcast
9.20.2021]

Substitute ‘painting’ for?
stitching
natural dyeing
………..

Images from ‘Sonia Delaunay’ catalogue from Tate exhibition 2015
Postcard from ‘Sonia Delaunay: Living Art’ Bard Graduate Center 2024





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