Color is a universal language. It has told the story of our planet long before we ever held a presence here – our planets history is painted in layers of the earth, embedded in its strata and strewn across it’s sun warmed surface. Humans have utilized color since the beginning of our time, as a means of storytelling, honoring the gifts the earth has provided them, and creative self expression. The source of much of the natural color on our planet runs through it’s strata and through our veins. It is part of us, we are part of it.
Beyond our cultural use of color as a means of self expression and storytelling – we can also utilize color to better understand and connect with our land. We can read the health of soil and our crops by it’s color, the changing of our seasons – and now, in the Age of the Anthropocene, the effects of human intervention and toxic pollutants on our precious planet.
Our rocks and soils tell geological and anthropological stories.
Color is the catalyst for this project to connect with people, and in turn, re-connect people to their land. We aspire to to inspire curiosity, mindfulness, exploration & experimentation, and storytelling as a means of offering a new perspective on connecting with our land and soils, sharing knowledges – especially those that have been silenced or wiped clean with industrial colonization and how our histories have been written- and with this, inspire a newfound appreciation for where we live, our community and cultural connections and to foster advocacy for preserving the wonders that we are losing, if we as a society continue down the path we have created.
This project is also an effort to bridge art and science – to strengthen the connection between two communities who’s process of inquiry are parallel to each other. We hope that these connections through collaborations, research projects, workshops and outreach can utilize the collected and archived, hands-on and personal accounts of citizen pigment foragers and scientists that participate in this project to bring awareness to environmental and social issues surrounding the land and sources of collected color.
We hope that those interested in this project make use of the information that we provide to not only learn more about the processes of collecting and using earth sourced pigments – both geological and organic, but also to connect to community – to share and learn more about cultural uses of color, shared experiences and new knowledges of environmental stewardship and restoration, advocacy ideas for environmental and social justice and to simply connect with people and land.
We look forward to being part of and witness the evolution of this project and look forward to connecting with you. Please don’t hesitate to connect us with any suggestions, opportunities for collaboration, or to simply say hello. Thank you for your time, your interest and openness to fostering new perspectives and means of connecting with each other and this beautiful, precious, and vibrant land we call home.