WILD PIGMENT PROJECT
New Mexico State University Art Museum
Los Cruses, New Mexico, USA, 22 June — 16 September 2023
Form & Concept, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, September 17–December 23, 2022
Curated by Tilke Elkins
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The Wild Pigment Project Exhibition promotes ecological balance and regenerative economies through a passion for wild pigments, their places of origin, and their cultural histories. The project connects artists to the land by providing resources, education and inspiration to integrate plant and mineral pigments, hand-gathered and prepared in local landscapes, into studio practice.
This group exhibition, curated by Wild Pigment Project founding director Tilke Elkins, gathers pigments, artwork and stories from people who’ve engaged with the project since its inception in 2019. Featured artists included: Karma Barnes, Heidi Gustafson, Sarah Hudson, Lucille Junkere, Nina Elder, Stella Maria Baer, Melissa Ladkin, Thomas Little and Caitlin Ffrench.
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Image copyright Form and Concept
photographer Byron Flesher.
Compounded Caldera Image copyright Form and Concept photographer Byron Flesher.
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Compounded Caldera, 2022
Raw Earth Pigments gathered on Bundjalung Country and Gold Leaf.
720 sq in 1828.8 cm sq
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In Latin, the words for human and soil come from the same root as that for earth. Soil functions as an interface between the body and its environment. Soil is the source of all life, literally and metaphorically. (1) We take birth on soil, live on soil, walk on soil, die on soil and finally vanish in soil. (2) All life comes from the mother soil and returns to her. (3)
Compounded Caldera explores how we are formed and informed by the intersections of our internal and external experiences of dramatic shifts in environmental cycles through the geomorphic medium of pigment-rich soil. Pigments and soils are produced by natural forces over aeons, a palimpsest of Earth’s endless cycles of life and death, creation and destruction.
Our human experience is composed of compounded responses. The artwork draws parallels between our relationships with each other and our connection to place. Compounded Caldera is a moment in time where bush fires, droughts, floods and an ongoing pandemic have ravaged our community in Northern New South Wales, Australia with little moment to exhale a breath before the next pressing moments of concerns take centre stage. The impacts of climate change have moved from subtle shifts and perturbations towards more obvious and compounding climatic events.
The work is produced with collected pigments gathered from the most easterly point of the Australian continent, the caldera of the ancient volcano Wollumbin. Barnes is meticulous in her techniques for deploying materials from the land, sourcing from disturbed landscapes such as landslides, road cuts, and natural erosion banks. Pigment origins include igneous lava flows and pre-volcanic soils metamorphosised under the heat and pressure of volcanic events 26 million years ago.
Compounded Caldera explores how we and the land change through time and shifting elemental pressures. It draws upon the Japanese art forms of Dorodangos - hand-compressed and polished soil spheres that reflect a refinement of base materials into precious objects, and Kintsugi - mending breaks with gold pigments in order to highlight the beauty of imperfections through their renewal and repair. When the land that we live upon shifts and changes during dramatic and catastrophic events our internal landscapes also become dramatically altered. The work explores how experiences of fragmentation that may alter our external and internal terrains can be metamorphosised through creative practice that alchemizes life experience.
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& (3) Satish Kumar, Soil, Soul, Society, a new trinity for our time, Leaping Hare Press, 2013.
(2) Bipin B Mishra et al, Soil and Human, Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, Bhagalpur, India, 2019
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Compounded Caldera Image copyright Form and Concept
photographer Byron Flesher.
Image copyright Form and Concept
photographer Byron Flesher.
Image copyright Form and Concept
photographer Byron Flesher.
Image copyright Form and Concept
photographer Byron Flesher.
Image credit Yaka Adamic
Image credit: Yaka Adamic
Image copyright Form and Concept
Image copyright Form and Concept
photographer Byron Flesher.
Raw Earth Pigment Palettes of Australia, 2022,
Raw Earth Pigments gathered on Bundjalung Country
18 sq in
45.7 sq cm
WILD PIGMENT PROJECT curated by Tilke Elkins
Form & Concept, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.
September 17–December 3, 2022
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Image credit Yaka Adamic
Image credit Yaka Adamic
Image credit Yaka Adamic
Image credit Yaka Adamic
WILD PIGMENT PROJECT
Curated by Tilke Elkins
September 17–December 3, 2022
Form & Concept, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.
OPENING RECEPTION WITH THE CURATOR
Friday, September 30, 5-7 pm
PIGMENTS AS CATALYSTS FOR
ACTION, DECOLONIZATION & HEALING:
A STORY-SHARING EVENT
Tuesday, October 11, 2 pm (MT) on Zoom
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This group exhibition, curated by Wild Pigment Project founding director Tilke
Elkins, gathers pigments, artwork and stories from people who’ve engaged with the project since
its inception. It traces the project’s extraordinary path, starting in Elkins’ home on Kalapuya lands (also
known as Springfield, Oregon) and branching out across the world. This ambitious exhibition, featuring
the work of over two dozen international artists who pair their unique and sometimes ephemeral
artwork alongside the foraged pigments which form their personal libraries,
Initiated by artist Tilke Elkins in early 2019, Wild Pigment Project sprang from a question: what does
it mean for artists of all kinds to work with materials they gather themselves in wild places—remote,
rural and urban—and how do the artists’ personal, ancestral histories interact with the histories held in
the land where they forage? For the first time, the artists who have made this project possible will be
exhibited together. This is a rare opportunity to experience not just the dynamic range of expression
possible through these wild pigments, in painting, textiles, printmaking, ceramics and sculpture, but also
the ‘behind-the-scenes’ workings of the pigment-centric studios, fields, forests, vacant lots, kitchens
and backyards where these works are produced.
All artists in the show are contributors to ‘Ground Bright,’ the monthly pigment subscription that supports
Wild Pigment Project and generates monthly funding for land and cultural stewardship organizations.
Through Ground Bright, the project has raised over $25,000 in reciprocal offerings to land and
community organizations, and reached more than 2,000 subscribers in 17 countries. The project, with
an Instagram following of 40,000, also provides an international listing of pigment artist/educators
called the Pigment People Directory, offers Reciprocal Guidelines for working with wild pigments, hosts
an online gallery, and generates regular funding for educational support for artists in global pigment
study.
The exhibit is the result of countless hours of dialog between the pigment practitioners represented
and artist Tilke Elkins, who founded the project and runs it solo, with support from her partner, Noelle
Guetti, who fulfills the Ground Bright subscriptions each month. Tilke Elkins and form & concept will
join in donating 22% of the proceeds from this exhibit to the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA).
EXHIBITING ARTISTS
Melonie Ancheta, Stella Maria Baer, Karma Barnes, Julie Beeler, Brittany Boles, Amanda Brazier,
Lorraine Brigdale, Catalina Christensen, Iris Sullivan Daire, Nina Elder, Caitlin ffrench, Heidi Gustafson,
Sarah Hudson, Ashlee Weitlauf, Lucille Junkere, Melissa Ladkin, Thomas Little, Daniela Naomi Molnar,
Marjorie Morgan, Sydney Matrisciano, Nancy Pobanz, Teri Power, Adi Blaustein Retjo, Caroline Ross,
Joshua Rudder, Natalie Stopka, Scott Sutton, Hosanna White
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