Despite the travails of our second day of the workshop, the third and last day finished up quite nicely. With all of us leaving with a hefty amount of pigment to take home to our studios to explore further in our practices. While most everyone stood around pounding, pulverizing, sifting and mulling all the clay and stones we had gathered into pigments, I continued to learn more about laking pigments out of the flowers Scott our teacher had collected. I can’t wait to take these beauties back to the studio to mix with my abaca pulp into pulp paintings. As well as gather more of my own around The Bronx to dry, soak and strain later into color.
I am glad to have made the journey to New Mexico one more time in my life. To experience the landscape of Georgia O’Keeffe and to make new friends with other artists interested in creating from Nature and working more sustainably with the materials surrounding us. I am glad to have gone, and look forward to more workshops in the future that take me out of New York for a time.
As for now, I am writing from Arizona at my parent’s home in Prescott. We have woken up to a morning I have never really experienced while out here. Cold, wet, damp, rainy and foggy. Another sign of climate change? The weather out here has seemed to have taken on more of the characteristics of back east with a winter that had more snow than NY, while back east, the late afternoons have been morphing into the monsoon rains and flash floods I remember experiencing while living in Colorado over 20 years ago. Only time can tell.
Wishing you all well as we head on into August. I return August 25th for Summer Tea with Tea Arts & Culture in Prospect Park by the Boat House, making paper with tea leaves for their poetry writing project, Odes to Common Things.
Best in travel,
Michele
