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can you guess what ochre mineral this is?? a woman

can you guess what ochre mineral this is?? a woman i made pigments for a few years ago (to replace precious divination pigments that belonged to her Buryat grandmother, and were stolen from her) sent this image to me last week. i had put the pigments for her in a painted steel metal box i used to keep my grandmothers things & precious last letter to me in.

she eventually put that metal box in an old ash tree as an offering to build relationship with the tree. not long after, the huge tree was struck by lightening and miraculously fell or "bowed out" in such a unbelievable protective way that no one and no homes were harmed.

the tree guy came and saw the tree had been decomposing and dying for a long time... the act of cutting her up became a celebration and people from all over came to tell all their childhood stories of the tree and people left gifts and took pieces of the tree to make things with. when they got to cutting up the last part of the tree... they found this.... the metal pigment box burnt into the shape of the hearthole where my friend had made her offering to relate to this elder, dying tree.

i find this so so beyond beautiful.

usually these private stories i hear and keep held between myself and rocks and the people i work with, but this is such an integral and beautiful part of "earth pigment" work... i asked to share... how it actually works....i cherish this image of a new full circle ochre that was made and it really helps me remember, in part, the container matters as much as the material itself...

monday dishes to do while writing on bones and she

monday dishes to do while writing on bones and shells 👁🐚

3 images from the same superfund recovery mine pla

3 images from the same superfund recovery mine place...

welcomings (those ol bones!)
closings (rainbows!)
and a good sign of a guarderlings keepin an eye on things (fresh scat on the path out!)

some raw post industrial ochre recovery happenin h

some raw post industrial ochre recovery happenin here near wales. hematite soil is darker and sparkley in person, but bright pink in certain light. 💗 notice the english ivy? both there and in the US its a very clear plant sign of former industrial invasiveness and earth disturbances. thx to wildling @foundandground.

contemplating many hushed songs of magnetic mud, s

contemplating many hushed songs of magnetic mud, sand, rocks, black ochre ores...

bricks, slag, tailing, ditch, fall fossils of ligh

bricks, slag, tailing, ditch, fall fossils of light right where they are

a clay place in town under the railway ~ coastal l

a clay place in town under the railway ~ coastal local mugwart and rosehips grow out of it, tiny oystershells and paperpulp wash ashore, people make amazing beachlog castles with walkways of seabricks, and in the picnic field i saw a really pretty bolbitius titubans poppin up

one grey pigment in my post yesterday is from here 🌬☁️☁️☁️

rainy day retouching a work i did of local northwe

rainy day retouching a work i did of local northwest earthes & with resting field flour water ~~~≅👁

a few binders i dont ever use but keep around as o

a few binders i dont ever use but keep around as offerings and love to look at and chew and smell ~ can yu tell which one is my actual chewed gum remains? 😂 and what do yu think it is? cherry tree? fish glue? acacia? aleppo pine? boswellia? mastika? fir? apricot?

yellow larches and weathering fall soil that keeps

yellow larches and weathering fall soil that keeps an eye on them...

how i tell time with flowers on my dining room tab

how i tell time with flowers on my dining room table....when the dahlias fill up the table, autumn's fully here... i think we're very close!

(other clues: leaf fossils w @juliapnorton , chanterelle toasts, pax dye mushrooms, dreaming of dusk...)

fresh rust thats growing in one of my mortars afte

fresh rust thats growing in one of my mortars after i took it out to get some first of the season rain and air (see previous post, its the dark steel apothecary one).

the black pigment is my personal dark mix of old growth charcoal, pyritic coal, jurassic tree, magnetic sand from opposite sides of our planet, magnetite from that hill, thos. eagle island... something else maybe i forget.

im thinking of my absolute favorite way to describe red ochre...

"no red deeper than red after black"
frm rothko chapel poem

@a.rural.pen thinks maybe i cld add some iron salts and maybe alchemize iron cyanoferrate?? (ie. prussian blue) but i cant bear to scrape it all off to try. too beautiful as is!

mortars + pestles, from my recent talk and studio

mortars + pestles, from my recent talk and studio offerings via @botanicalcolors. recording is up (on their website via feedback friday videos) if you want to watch and imagine you stopped by for a visitation 🖤

iron food for a future wave ~~~~~

iron food for a future wave ~~~~~

im giving a rare little talk + studio walkabout ho

im giving a rare little talk + studio walkabout hosted by my friends over at @botanicalcolors...THIS WEEK on their FEEDBACK FRIDAY! go to botanicalcolors.com to RSVP and come with all your deep dark earth vision questions!!

i will leave a good amount of time for conversation bcs i want to pretend my friends are all coming over for tea and rock talk in my tiny rural hideaway...

thanx to kathy & amy for hosting 🤎

good morning, dont forget to stay here on earth!

good morning, dont forget to stay here on earth! and heres some xtra air & space i made for a brilliantly energetic woman painter mama @sincerelyemma.studio livin in texas...

sending love and support to all my friends, birth and psyche workers and health workers in tx right now.

(and yes! thats a tiny bottle of international klein blue!)

"to see the world, things dangerous to come, to see behind walls, draw closer, to feel" ~ walter mitty

px 2+3 paintings of emma's

i just love looking at this place memory while my

i just love looking at this place memory while my little niece naps... how does anyone ever start reading geologic ŧime∿lines? lot of my work and research and scribing is off this grid these days... but while im on urban wifi at my sisters house during my auntie duties, imma sprinkle a few ochre (or uh my cat dove) offlings thanks to @foundandground's interwebbling nudge o earth love 🖤

resting 🜜🜞 places

resting 🜜🜞 places

coffee + rocks + baby baby sanddollar morn this we

coffee + rocks + baby baby sanddollar morn this week with amazing artists at @vashonartistresidency

do you see the gold blink within the evileye??! it is evidence of a magic synchronicity of meeting @depyzepo an artist in the IRON BLACKSMITH LINEAGE OF LEMNOS GREECE who makes these glasseous powers. yep. if yu know me, yu know how beloved Lemnian iron ochre realms are to me. mind blown.

thanxxoxo to brilliant iron bone heart @hannahhirsekorn and generous artist extraordinaire @cathysarkowsky for space and time and hearth there together

pics ~~~
1. vashon beach pigment finds, along with ochre gifts of iceland, japan and jordan rocks and ventifact. eye & clay garlic amulet by @depyzepo
2. worlds best crock pot
3. smoke skies from the ferry
4. genius ambidextrous smoke holder contraption by the windician @at_deidre
5. scorpian ethical taxidermy by @hannahhirsekorn

rain came today! so makin spirit seal green earthe

rain came today! so makin spirit seal green earthes or sankir for my iconographer friend @nmaione_ . i rlly appreciate the traditional icon writer's palette and practice.... anyone else love to watch Tarkovsky's Andre Rublev film epic on repeat??

& also nongreens reqwested for a face: a west lands golden ochre mixed from several places, and ofcourse a sacred blue bog enshroudins...

place memories for a friend...

place memories for a friend...

O dust! in case yu were wondering, yes! the ochre

O dust! in case yu were wondering, yes! the ochre archive continues to hold together yr brilliant offerings from places near and far...

theres over 600 ochreous substances (not to mention all the other rock beings, plant medicines, leaves, fibers, detritus, flowers, coffee, seeds, bones, letters, crusty jewels, rotten coins, human touches...). thank you!!!! i post only some of what comes in, and it is taking me a long time to get thru/with them (do yu think i might need an apprentice some day???)....

honestly number is irrelevent (the whole blazing aquarium is ochre's gazillion sampled house + these are not really objects they are energetic entities of counsel and memory and friends). these containers are temporary displays and homes, timekeepers on a strange clock...only until their larger home is built!

v grateful for so much participation, faith, trust and support of this sloooow ripenin, sanctuary place making project over the years... i hope to share more as of yet non-public aspects of this project in the coming months and years! 🪨💫

pandemic-times(ish) offerings here from: @wildpigmentproject @a.rural.pen @lucillejunkere @goldenberries @lauren_sauder @sunspritehandwork @cosasrosaura @el_matojal @renderedearth, karen dillman, joan harrison, diana keener , ...

takin field notes in neighboring old river prayeri

takin field notes in neighboring old river prayerie...

dream medium. metabolic land paint. so simple i mi

dream medium. metabolic land paint. so simple i missed it for a long time... but thanks to @clayworksclayplasters guidebook and bookmakers blogs and drove past a stunning field of golden wheat near my studio && read "against writing nature" this morn @emergencemagazine...

i stirrd ground wheat from skagit @fairhavenmill. water from underneath here. regional undersoils i barely work (beloved magnetic sand, burnt ochre, glacial clay from northwest haunts). and whatever else needed to be chatter (juniper, local limestone, cedar timber ash). edible. digestable. enduring. alive.

i cld do these studies for future clay walls and ochre niches for years and i will... bcs this earth medium stays put!! is forgiving. and warm. breathable yet sealing. and i know these places in my heart of hearts.

what do these undersoils want to do...? curious to

what do these undersoils want to do...? curious to start an experimental dive into structural components for earth architecture work to come. these materials intrique me bcs of their behaviors, how they make still or draw down to make breaks in space...

& revisited some ochre altarpieces to see how the texture has changed since i last watered them (yes every so often i water my paintings/palettes/windows/spirit places) 🖤

cleaning out my fire pit to rest til the rainy sea

cleaning out my fire pit to rest til the rainy season... its basically where i toss my remainders pigments for the summer... a dust (and spent flowers) gathering ground of sorts!

ferruginous bodies from my northwest home mountain

ferruginous bodies from my northwest home mountain teacher i walk to....the ochre pigment is residuals from ancient peridotite weathering (the sandy looking greenish pigment is peridotite).

nowadays enhanced peridotite weathering is being studied as a carbon sequestration opportunity ... ie. turning atmosphere back into stone thru exposing more of it. this process, on a smaller scale, is also called pigment making...

look up the 2018 NYT article on "how Oman's rocks cld help save the planet" and CO2 capture research utilizing largely peridotite...

(((photo is from my talk "ochre's sanctuary : undoing the iron age" which yu can watch on earlyfutures.com ... wld love to hear your thoughts!! )))

good mornings from norway by way of my friend elin

good mornings from norway by way of my friend elin's beautiful work @primusprimus

some roadsides from the past couple months... morr

some roadsides from the past couple months... morrison formation, bentonite hills, chuckanut sandstone, volcanic cascades mts i live beneath, and Dove the ochre den guarddogcat sleepin on the job...

long live earth

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