Thinking in Colors

Maybe this is what I'm here to do: think in colors, textures, fibers, spaces, and sometimes lines and paragraphs. That's where I feel peaceful these days, in colors. It's hard to explain, but it's like the weight of color theory, art history, and tunnel vision on one presentation of color all happening in my mind.

Blue like cobalt glass, like cobalt oxide, like my 75 ceramic tiles, like cyanotype, like blueprints, like a weaving made with blue cotton thread.

I'm not a weaver, but I'm thinking in weavings, too, and I could learn to weave. Noah's mom had a beautiful loom that was offered to me after she died, but with no skills and no place for it, we couldn't take it. I think it's okay. Sad in that way of things passing but okay in the way of art equipment being in use by someone somewhere.

We're starting to look for apartments in Seattle, and we're trying to find one with room for me to do some serious dyeing. I need big flat spaces, a sink, and a stove, so it shouldn't be too hard. It feels incredibly self-validating to say, I need studio space, and then to look for it.

Green like summer sunlight through the maple leaves, like the spring on its way to its deepest point, like new growth on a philodendron, like my batik piece, like lots of yellow dye with a tiny bit of blue.

I'm using my pastels now to try to get these colors down. They all have descriptions written next to them. Oh, typical, can't have images without words, can we?

I keep thinking, I have an unlimited color palette in yarn dyeing. Oh my god. That is unheard of. I was a ceramicist first, happily stuck with the colors of things that would form a glaze on clay. I loved my ash glazes--gray. My iron-rich clay from Missouri--red, then purple in the kiln. I was never a painter, never a photographer; in surface design, I was most excited by cyanotype and its one color, blue. Maybe I'll end up moving towards natural dyes because of this, just in an effort to limit the palette.

When I decided to try painting pictures at home, I bought black paint and nothing else.

But I have these memories of colors, of skies, of times of day, of plant textures, and I think, I would wear those as socks or a scarf. I would wrap the night sky full of fireflies around me; I would put summer green leaves on my feet. There is a joy in this functionality, this object-making, and in my part of that process, producing color.

I miss knitting so much, more than I can explain, more than I miss almost anything else connected to my arm injury. But this is a good way to stay close.

And who knows, maybe I'll end up weaving yarn. Sometimes I imagine giant weavings full of dropped stitches hanging from the ceiling against the wall ... in a medium brown, mud brown, burlap brown. It's been a long time since I took the things from my mind and made them happen; maybe it is time.