10x10

Natural order

I’m a big fan of squares in my art.

To be more accurate, I should probably broaden that statement to say ‘I love parallelograms’ because rectangles and rhombi pop into my artwork as well.  Since a square is a kind of rectangle and rhombus, but neither a rectangle nor a rhombus is necessarily a square, I may want to be more inclusive of the linear shapes that have inspired me for decades.

All kinds of naturally dyed parallelograms playing on this canvas!

Side note:  Can you tell that I’ve been tutoring my son, Mason, in geometry this spring?

So, as I sat down to write this month’s Trail Tale to share my journey into #The100DayProject, I realized I was playing with squares again.  Only this time, in an algebraic way:  10x10=100, or more simply written 10².

Projection

When mixed media artist, Natalie Dadamio, suggested I try #The100DayProject this year, I thought it would be a fantastic way to deepen my commitment to my creative practice.  Knowing I would be grounded from travel, at least of the air variety, diving into 100 days of a focused art ‘project’ seemed like a wonderful way to enrich the time in my home studio.

We used to have a kitchen island, but that real estate is now gone, along with the dining room table.

But why 100 days, and how would this differ from the extensive hours in the ‘off-hours’ that I’ve already heavily invested in this crazy creative biz dream of mine?

Seems the consensus is as follows on the power of 100 days of focus:

• It is long enough to create a habit

• It is short enough to see the finish line

• It requires setting an achievable goal

• It demands planning to allocate time and space

• It is extremely helpful to break it up into manageable micro-steps

Coincidentally, three of my 2020 goals are hovering right now in the 100 day range.  Making healthy nutrition choices, increasing movement and meditating have become daily habits.  Ways of living that seemed to elude me throughout the years are wonderfully entrenched in my world today.

And, I’m at least 10x10 times happier.

All smiles on the cochineal farm in Oaxaca, Mexico, March 2020.

 100 days of art….bring it on!

Hash it out

First thing first was to decide what my 100 Day Project focus would be.  As you may have noticed, I suffer from a kind of creative distraction disorder.  My artwork crosses all kinds of discipline and medium lines as my curiosity drags me from one to another and back again.

So, how was I to choose just one of my many passions?

Easy:  #100DaysOfMultiPassion

But, in an effort to corral those multi-passions of mine into a more cohesive project, I needed a theme.

One idea came to me naturally:  #100DaysOfColorsFromNature

The rainbow of mineral pigments I foraged while on residency in Oaxaca, Mexico, March 2020.

Now, with not one, but two hashtags declaring my project, there was one tiny manageable micro-step I had to take.

Breaking it all down by 10.

Chunky monkey

As I hit publish on this blog, I’m about to celebrate my 25th day – one quarter done! For those of you following my adventures on Instagram, you have had a preview of where these 100 days are meandering.  For those of you on Facebook – sorry!

Breaking the project down into 10 days each of 10 different ‘topics’ surrounding natural color felt like the perfect solution to keep me on task.  Plus, I argued, it would allow me to truly explore all of the ways nature’s palette has inspired my art.

Pigment color studies from the regions of Peru where we explored and foraged in June/July 2019.

If you’ve read this far, you are in for a sneak peek of the full 10x10 plan.  Plus, I’ll throw in a little commentary and few more photos of chunks 1 and 2 (Days 1-20) which have already flown by:

Days 1-10: Natural dyes

• I may have started using organic colors in ice, but the list of materials I have dyed from nature also include textile, paper, bioplastics and even eggs.  I may have left out mung bean and dough in this project, but I added a new piece to the dye mix – ink!

Cookin’ colors in the kitchen to make inks from red cabbage, black bean, avocado skins and turmeric.

Days 11-20: Mineral pigments

• Over the past 1.5 years, I widened my color scope to include the earth beneath my traveling feet.  Each day, I shared some of the subtle hues I foraged from 7 unique locations:  Washington, Idaho, Oregon and California on the west coast, Pennsylvania to the east and Mexico and Peru to the south.

Pigmented stones foraged along Wissahickon Creek in Philadelphia, PA, July 2019.

Days 21-30: Textile colors

• I’m midstream in the 3rd chunk and creation is underway.  Every day I’m building a quick color study with textile remnants I have collected from larger pieces I built in Oaxaca.  The idea is to push the design from a limited natural palette in a small space.

Textile Stack Series of quick color studies during #The100DayProject. Drop me a line to purchase.

If you want a piece of the action, each one of these mixed media works on canvas is for sale at $40.

What a steal of a deal!

Now the next 7 chunks are part of the plan, but I reserve the right to make adjustments along the way:

Days 31-40: Installation – I will place 10 new naturally colored sculpture clusters within 0.5 miles of my house.

Days 41-50: Oaxaca Minis – I will build 10 new 8x8 textile works on canvas from the full Oaxaca color range.

Days 51-60: Bioplastics –  I will brew up all kinds of wonder with gelatin, algae and botanical dyes.

Translucency and botanical dyes all wrapped up in bioplastics.

Days 61-70: Monoprints – I’ve wanted to explore this technique, so I plan to create 10 pieces using only natural colors.

Days 71-80: Three shape challenge - Textile

Days 81-90: Three shape challenge - Monoprint

Days 91-100: Three shape challenge:  Installation

Let’s just say the last 3 chunks are meant to hold my feet to the ‘simplicity’ fire. 

The same artist who enticed me to join #The100DayProject (Natalie Dadamio), also challenged me to ONLY use three shapes in my work during the 100 days.  I figured 3 chunks totaling 30 days fit perfectly into the 3 shapes theme.

The 3 primary colors very cooly represented by turmeric, red beet and blue butterfly pea infused ice.

These three are for you, Natalie!

Cubism

Riding shotgun to my 100 days, Mason has found a teeny space for his geometry book on the dining table that is now smack dab in the middle of my studio, aka our kitchen.

We started solving for volume this past week.  All of the 2 dimensional shapes have introduced their 3 dimensional siblings:  spheres, cones, pyramids and cylinders.

 And yes, the glorious square is full of pride and flaunting its cube cousin just to make me smile!

My trusty installation travel buddies: earth pigment painted paper pulp blocks. Stack ‘em up!

I sure do love cubes…naturally.

The colorful Mr. Biv

The stuff of rainbows

Don’t know about you, but I have a handful of tricks up my sleeve to remember trivial bits of information.  I am the maven of mnemonics:

• Need to know how many days there are in April?  Got my knuckles for that.

• That 5 letter Great Lake messing up your crossword puzzle? Try H.O.M.E.S. on for size.

• Pulling out the crayons to draw your sweetheart a rainbow?  I’d like you to meet Mr. Roy G. Biv

I think it was my grade school art teacher, Mr. Malley, who taught us how to remember the seven colors of the rainbow.  (Yes, I had a full time art teacher with a dedicated art room when I was a kid!).

Mr. Biv has been a tool in my paint caddy ever since.

The organic colors of the rainbow hand-dyed on paper in my residency studio in Oaxaca, Mexico.

So, of course, Mr. Biv was my travel companion to my artist residency in Oaxaca, Mexico, last month as I continued my quest to find the rainbow in nature’s palette.  Let’s just say, we found all seven of his colorful letters and then some! 

Red

The color of love (among many other things) is a highly sought after hue that has a history connected to imperialism and revolution.  Minerals of hematite and cinnabar, the root of madder and several parasitic creatures have been foraged and crushed so we can bathe in red.

One insect in particular has become the darling in the wide world of dye:  cochineal. 

I had only bumped into cochineal about a year ago when I was preparing for my residency in Iceland.  Visiting a dye master in the countryside two hours north of Reykjavik, Guðrún Bjarnadóttir shared the secret sauce of her scarlet wool yarn.

The gorgeous hand-dyed Icelandic wool of Hespa Iceland. Looks like a neutral cochineal soak to me with those bright fuchsias peeking through.

She had a large jar of cochineal that she imported to Iceland as her ancestors had done before.  You see, red and its variations are not natural colors found in Iceland.

Cochineal is a parasite that lives on the nopales cactus indigenous to present day Mexico and Peru.

The white powder of the cochineal insect dusting nopales cacti before harvest.

Contrary to what you may think, the red comes from carminic acid, not blood, which acts as a deterrent against predators.  Or, if you are human, it seems you are wildly attracted to it!

Working for three weeks on a cochineal farm in Santa Maria Colotepec in Oaxaca, Mexico, the secrets of its beauty were slowly revealed to me.

All the lovely shades of cochineal hanging out in wool yarn on the farm near Oaxaca, Mexico.

But, not only did this tiny insect produce the most amazing carmine color, it played a starring role in many of Mr. Biv’s letters.

Orange

Beyond the measurements I wrote about in last month’s Trail Tale, dyeing incorporates some elements of chemistry. 

Who remembers those little litmus strips from your high school lab?  Well, turns out cochineal is sensitive to the pH level in the dye bath.  Add a bunch of lemon juice, aka. acid, and mira - orange!

Shifting cochineal neutral by squeezing lemons. The secret of playing with pH!

Makes me chuckle to think that adding yellow to red actually makes orange in this corner of the dye world.  Trust me, that isn’t a hard and fast rule in dye chemistry, but cochineal happily plays along.

Yellow

I know what you’re thinking:  lemon juice must be a key ingredient in yellow dye.  Nope.  I have recently seen Sasha Duerr, a natural dye specialist, create yellow from citrus skins, but in Oaxaca, we used pericon.

You may know this native herb as Mexican tarragon or marigold, both of which are used as dye in other parts of the world.  The pericon grown and harvested on the cochineal farm, however, produced a gloriously vibrant yellow that demanded visual attention.

The green leaves of pericon cooking up some instense yellow on silk strips I used for installation in Oaxaca.

Move over marigold – you may have a rival nipping at your heels, but pericon may be tough to find in my local PNW nursery.

Green

When it comes to the plant world, it’s not easy being green.

Both, Guðrún Bjarnadóttir and Manuel, my Oaxacan dye master, utilize the primary color theory to achieve green.  First you dye with yellow (pericon or another yellow source), and then you over-dye with blue (indigo), another elusive color rarely found in nature. Voila - green!

Although I attempted this on the farm with my wool yarn samples, I struggled with the indigo (more on that below).  That didn’t stop me from experimenting in my own dye studio on days away from the farm, and I had some success.

Who knew the cold sludge of fermenting black beans could tease out such gorgeous greens?

No over-dye step required here.  Just a 2 day cold soak in fermented black beans! 

I was expecting a grayish blue dye result when I bought the dried beans in the Mercado 20 de Noviembre.  You just never know with natural dye - the surprise element is one of its sweetest characteristics. 

Blue

If you think red is tough, you haven’t met blue yet.  Treasured minerals of lapis lazuli and azurite are pigments of royalty.  In the plant kingdom, indigo is queen.

The cochineal farm is an educational venue exclusively focused on the natural dyes of the region, and indigo has roots in the tropical climate of the Oaxacan coastline.  Manuel grows every plant we used on the farm, but his indigo suffers in the dry heat.  So, as traders have done for centuries, Manuel brings his indigo crystals from the coast.

Grinding indigo with mortar and pestle before adding it to the dye pot.

Extracting color from indigo is a labor intensive process and one that requires humility and reverence. I was quickly humbled by the mystery of blue.

Indigo

With all the work that went into making 12 dye pots to create 40 unique colors over three weeks, saving indigo for last didn’t surprise me.  However, I soon realized that rushing indigo at the end did not honor its spirit, and so it did not fully share its color with me.

The many shades of indigo from an ignored dye pot hanging out with no-fuss cochineal orange.

When I explained how tough my day with indigo had been, a local artist told me the secret of the blue goddess: one must be fully present without distraction or haste.

I love this thought.  It rings true across so many aspects of life, and so now indigo is yet another gentle reminder of the beauty of presence.

Violet

The last letter in Mr. Biv’s name was a dual effort in the organic realm.  That sneaky, chameleon of a dye, cochineal, can be shifted to a yummy color of the violet persuasion.  All the alchemist has to do is sprinkle in minerals (various recipe options) which can shift the pH balance to alter the hue.

Cochineal neutral plus 15% alum working its violet magic!

No minerals to be had – no problem:  muicle to the rescue!  Picking the leaves of this medicinal shrub on the farm produced a lovely violet dye as well.  I doubt these leaves are sold in my local farmer’s market, so they may be a color treat solely for the Oaxacan palette.

Dye me a river

The colorful experience I was so lucky to have in Oaxaca is not soon to be forgotten. Just ask Mr. Biv.

But, that hasn’t stopped me from building my own mnemonic device to capture some of the amazing tips I learned, and a few of the easy kitchen recipes that can produce a rainbow.

Feeling inspired to get your dye on now? Click here for the Cookin’ Color Brew Booklet to see if you can catch Roy G. Biv just like I did!

xoxo - Byrdie

Beyond Measure

For good measure

One of my new favorite sayings is ‘you can’t manage what you don’t measure’.  It is a gem of Peter Drucker’s thought that I’ve applied to just about everything in my life recently:

• The food I’m eating, particularly the sugar (cause of most evil in the world!)

• The growing number on my email list (many, many thanks to all of you!)

• The distance and length of time of my daily walk (finally a habit!)

I’m sure I’ve annoyed my closest friends by spewing this wisdom a few too many times.

Funny enough, measurement is strangely absent from much of my creative practice.  My tendency is to eye it, guesstimate, and just plain wing it most of the time.  The result is an inexplicable delight of the unknown.

Will it work?  I never know, but I trust the surprise I may stumble upon is often better than any measured steps I could have meticulously planned.

Bob Ross calls these happy accidents, and I’m perfectly content crashing into some of my most beloved creations.

Bumping into the one and only Bob Ross at the Funko headquarters in Everett, WA 2019.

Drastic measures

Having a happy accident in art school may have started this trend of semi-controlled spontaneity.  It is an example I speak of often, and I believe I may have even mentioned it in a Trail Tales blog of yore.  Forgive the repetition, but I suppose that is how what we learn can truly sink in.

At the University of Montana, the Ceramics Department is world-renowned, many thanks to the unique work of Rudy Autio that pushed the conventional boundaries of clay.  As a BFA student, everyone is required to take Ceramics 101 at the very minimum.

One of the beautiful slices of U of M art school is that it was the most welcoming, inclusive, non-competitive and encouraging environments I have ever experienced.  I count myself extraordinarily lucky as I understand this experience is not always shared among other BFA programs.

Walking in as a complete newbie, I was wowed by the amazing work being produced by the graduate students, and incredibly inspired to bumble my way through an art form that has its roots in measurement.  My professor, Beth Lo, was kind and generous in sharing her knowledge of this ancient art form, and I honestly tried to follow all the steps on each project we were assigned.

Honest.

Our final project was a chance to design anything we wanted to be saggar-fired in a vessel we built ourselves.  As my 3D intrigue was beginning to bubble, as well as my installation curiosity and unexplained love of all things square, I knew exactly what mixed media magic I wanted to create, and I quickly sketched the design and built a board to describe my vision.

One of my BFA thesis mixed media pieces used in an installation. This was the vision I had for my ceramics project.

When Professor Lo pulled the vessel from the fire, she warned me that I would be extremely disappointed in the result because it was nothing like what I had planned.

The center piece of the biggest mistake in my art career, 1995.

True, the 5 cube forms were not the smooth porcelain surface I was after, nor the rusty colors of the earth.  They were a bubbly mess of grays and blues with ashen edges.  My idea of embedding polaroid transfers into the center square was quickly washed away by residual globules of mis-measured glazes that had an unexpected combustion soirée in the kiln.

I was blown away, smiling from ear to ear, because I could never have planned such surprising beauty.  At that moment, my professor told me I would be well-suited in the wild world of art.

Measure up

For the past two years, I have become passionate about extracting color from nature.  Much of this was driven by a desire to use only organic matter in my installation practice, particularly when leaving a piece of art to dissipate into the earth.

Starting in my kitchen, I began brewing colors from spices and vegetables I found in my cabinets and fridge.  From there, I became curious about foraging for botanicals and experimented by creating dyes from seaweed and lichen.  My longstanding love of stone lead me to the world of minerals and earth pigments.  Yes, I am officially addicted to the quest for a natural palette.

The colors of the rainbow courtesy of Moonstone Beach in Cambria, CA.

And, the exploration continues.  Today, I am writing from my artist residency studio in Oaxaca, Mexico, a global center for textiles and botanical dyeing.  My intention is to learn by doing with hands-on instruction from a dye master of the region, as opposed to my stand-by instructor known as the internet.

How will things measure up?

In short measure

As I’ve quietly entered the wide world of natural dyeing, I’ve become acutely aware that ratios, weights and recipes are quite important in assuring a desired color result.  I have the utmost respect for the long history of passing precise knowledge from master to pupil.  Beyond that, I am humbly grateful to have the unique opportunity to simply learn about botanical dyeing.

My master, Manuel, teaching me the Zapotec dye tradition from the Oaxacan region in Mexico, Feb 2020.

Manuel, the dye master in my residency, has shared many local practices along with some practical advice about what to avoid:

• Don’t let your dye come to a boil to avoid losing the colorant to vapor

• Don’t brew your textile with your botanical material to avoid splotching

• Don’t let the textile touch the bottom of the dye pot to avoid color variation

• Don’t stray far from the ratio of plant-to-water-to-textile to avoid weak color saturation

• Don’t dry your fabric in the direct sunlight to avoid quick color fading

All of this makes perfect sense in the world of order and consistency, but as Manuel noted, none of it is a guarantee of color perfection to match your mind’s eye. It’s Mother Nature’s job to figure that out for you.

With this wisdom, I believe I’m perfectly suited for organic dyeing.   The joy I experience is in the unique variation of color that nature chooses to surprise me with every single time.

First color swatches in my residency studio with textiles brought from the US and NL. Excited for the wool yarn soon to dye at the farm with Manuel!

In fact, I hope to never dye the same color twice, and splotches – bring ‘em on!

In equal measures

On my mantle, I lovingly display the biggest mistake of my BFA program, and my most cherished piece of art.  These explosive cubes of clay are a constant reminder that although measurement is important, celebrating the unexpected is the spark of life.

Wonder what color surprises Oaxaca holds for me the next few weeks? Stick around for the big reveal in next month’s Trail Tales!