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Just as nineteenth century Shakers used contemporary paint manuals and pigments, chrome yellow and Prussian blue, they consulted contemporary dye books: Elijah Bemis’ The Dyer’s Companion (New Haven, CT 1815) and Molony’s Masterpiece on wool, silk and cotton dyeing (Lowell, MA 1837).

Dye recipes fill the pages of a mid-19th century Sister’s book from the Harvard Shaker Community. More colors than one can imagine. Dye books speak of possibilities, tantalizing tints of deep dark indigo, rosy reds of madder, geranium scarlet cochineal, dove grey drab and London brown. Dyeing is science, measuring, mixing and timing. Dyeing is days of preparation: grinding, heating, boiling, dipping and dipping, rinsing and more rinsing and finally drying. Color comes at times fast and at others relentlessly slow, and only revealed when the cloth is completely dry.

Painted in layers of watercolors and inks, crisscrossed like a warp and weft or striated light lines streaming into a room, Honeycutt’s accordion book anything but drab sits on a Prussian blue Shaker work table, recalls a bolt of dyed cloth or an unfolded Shaker map and speaks to the root of accordion, accord. Each fold builds on another, joined in unity and harmony, an accordance. Around the room, Shaker umbrella swifts, reels to wind yarn into balls, constructed by Brethren and used by Sisters, further demonstrate the duality, the equality, the accordance.

Four of Honeycutt’s poems accompany the exhibition: anything but drab, we collour, ROYGBIV, and spirt/earth/air/fire. Listen to her read these on Sound cloud, here.

Across from the Shaker Office building on Fruitlands grounds sits the Seasonal Gallery with the exhibition “a good many hands” Shaker Communities Woven through Word, Image and Object curated by Senior Curator Christie Jackson.

Fruitlands Museum, 102 Prospect Hill Road, Harvard, Massachusetts 01451

Thursday through Sunday, 10 AM -4 PM. Grounds are open dawn to dusk.

anything but drab opens on May 1, 2025 at Fruitlands Museum (Harvard, MA).

“We are also excited to announce that artist Brece Honeycutt is collaborating with Senior Curator Christie Jackson on an installation in the Shaker Office at Fruitlands Museum. Honeycutt’s interest in the temporal and spiritual uses of Shaker color will be explored in her installation, anything but drab. Honeycutt’s installation centers on a large-scale accordion book painted with watercolors and dyes, similar to ones used by the Shakers. The colors on the pages echo Shaker chromatics found on the building’s architectural elements. Brece’s work, and other Shaker objects on display in the Shaker Office, will be in dialogue with the exhibition, a good many hands, on view in the gallery.” from the Trustees of Reservations.

Fruitlands Museum, 102 Prospect Hill Road, Harvard, Massachusetts 01451

Museum Spring hours Thursday through Sunday, 10 AM -4 PM. Grounds are open dawn to dusk.

Thrilled to be presenting at the annual Enfield Shaker Forum, April 25-27, 2025.  Prismatic Utopia: researched poetry focuses on the why and how of taking my research regarding the temporal and spiritual uses of color in Shaker Villages and turning specific topics into poetry. The talk will be punctuated by reading of poems relating to Shaker villages, paint colors, dyeing of textiles and objects.  

Find information about the Shaker Forum, HERE

The Nomenclature of Colours III currently on view online, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London, England.

View the whole exhibition HERE

madder cochineal annatto sappanwood, 2025, watercolor, ink, threads, photographs, arches paper, 30″ x 30″

It’s that time of year for the annual Colour & Poetry: A Symposium VII Slade School of Fine Art

Friday March 21  2025 via zoom. Registration is free here

Ruth Siddall / Paul Smith / Vaishali Prazmari / Lavinia Harrington / Lujain Tamer-Mansour/ Jordan Verdes / Liz Rideal / Johny Meghames / Rob Kesseler / Jenny Ihn / Scott Brown / Liz Lawes / Sharon Morris/ Yannis Ziogas / Christine Kirubi / Fiona McLees / Roman Sheppard Dawson / Stella Kajombo / Liz Harrington / Jasmir Creed / Lesley Sharpe / Sara Choudhrey / Lucy Mayes / Brece Honeycutt / Tian Rossana Wong/ 

At 12:30 EST, my talk “collour scarlet on a stormy day” poems from Prismatic Utopia

Looking forward to talking at the upcoming Enfield Shaker Museum Fiber Weekend, March 28-30, 2025.

I will be speaking on texts textures textiles on Friday evening, but there is lots more happening.

For more info on other speakers and programs. Find it HERE.

My grandmother stacked and stored her quilts in the attic. One of my favorite pastimes was unfolding them and looking at their patterns and fabrics. From this process, I learned color theory.  A discarded box of one inch quilt squares, a lesson using the drop spindle, a goldenrod field turned into dye; these happenstances led me to construct textiles, research historic texts and produce textures in my sculptures and installations.  These interwoven occurrences will be discussed in my evening slideshow talk. 

Early American Literature just released the podcast about our project and performance meetinghouse. Miriam Cantor-Stone and I enjoyed talking with editor Autumn Hall and hope you will as well.  Listen to the podcast here.

meetinghouse was published in EAL Issue 59.3 in their Inventions section: "An “Invention” features imaginative writing that can inform and become part of the trajectory of early American literature. Whether poetry, prose, personal narrative, creative nonfiction, drama, or any combination of the above, the journal invites submissions that reframe how readers apprehend early America broadly conceived. Ultimately, an “Invention” represents new ways of understanding past lives and literature."

More information about meetinghouse.

Women Walking to Water

Suzi Banks Baum, Brece Honeycutt, Melanie Mowinski, Sarah Pike, Lori Spencer, Jessica Yurkofsky
Organized by Melanie Mowinski, MCLA Professor of Art

February 7- March 28, 2025
Opening Reception: Friday February 7, 5-7pm

MCLA Gallery 51, 51 Main Street, North Adams, MA

Hours:  Wednesday to Sunday 12:00pm to 5:00pm

Please note MCLA's spring break hours:
Saturday 3/15: 12-5 pm
Wednesday 3/19: 12-5pm
Thursday 3/20: 12-5pm
Sunday 3/23: 12-5pm

Katharine Abbot reviews the exhibition in the The Berkshire Eagle, February 12, 2025

Thrilled to be in the group exhibition, I SAY: Women Artists and the Words They Use, on view at The Hotchkiss School (Lakeville, CT) from January 7 until March 7, 2025.

Exhibiting artists include: Fern Apfel, Lesley Dill, Louise Eastman and the Victory Garden Collective, Madge Evers, Guerilla Girls, Jenny Holzer, Brece Honeycutt, Corita Kent, Melanie Mowinski, Leslie Roberts, Linda Stein, Tiny Pricks Project with related historical objects.  Curated by Joan Baldwin, Curator of Special Collections.

On Sunday October 13, 2024, Brece Honeycutt will have a skyday artist residency at Bascom Lodge on Mt. Greylock, Adams, MA. For information on Bascom Lodge, click HERE.

Honeycutt continues to be fascinated by clouds and the ever-changing sky.  Seconds compounded into minutes often bring quick sky changes.  Contrasted with lingering, long lasting blues punctuated with wisps of white clouds.  And yet, grey upon yellowgrey upon orangegrey into pinkgrey can be both grim and great, depending.

Whilst on top of Mt. Greylock, she will observe and translate onto paper with words and watercolor the skyday.  At 4pm, she will read prose and poetry related to clouds, including poems from her forthcoming chapbook, pink grey blue sky cloud.

Strolling down Spring or Latham Streets in Williamstown this autumn? Look up at the banners making up Eyes on Art Town

Opening reception from 3-5pm, Sunday October 6, 2024, Spring Street Market, (66 Spring Street, Williamstown, MA).

Banners on view 24/7, rain or shine!

Eyes on Art Town banner exhibition is a collaborative project of The Town of Williamstown, Williamstown Cultural District, Williamstown Chamber of Commerce, and all the creative community members who submitted images for consideration.

The jurors of the 2024 exhibition are Devon Nowlin, Museum Project Director for Williams College Museum of Art and mixed-media artist (Williamstown), George LeMaitre, Sculptor and owner of 13.5 Grove Art Works (Adams), Jill Gustavis, Watercolor artist and instructor (Pittsfield), and Reuben Lara, Comic artist and Illustrator (Dalton).

The banner exhibition is made possible with grant funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Cultural Council of Northern Berkshire.

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

Thrilled to be presenting at the annual Historic Deerfield 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.

September 13 & 14, 2024 at Historic Deerfield.  Full information HERE.