Mara Baker’s interest in color goes beyond its perceptual quality—she considers color itself to be a material, shaped by the geology of the earth, water, air, place, deep time, and transience. Mara has turned her own yard into a living studio, rewilding it with native prairie plants and establishing a dye garden where plants are cultivated for their pigments. Her current body of work employs plant and earth colorants to create hybrid paintings, drawings and installations. We have invited Mara to share this way of considering color through a full-day exploration of earth pigments, both foraged and cultivated. 

Within this Saturday session, participants will learn about pigment foraging and how mineral pigments are processed into inks for painting or printing using simple non-toxic materials like burnt plate oil, magnesium carbonate, and gum arabic. In the afternoon, participants will then use earth-based inks, handmade from ochres, Venetian red, and other earth pigments, to create monoprints. 

Using Mara’s approach of combining found and newly made materials as a springboard, participants will be invited to create layered and transient artworks (monoprints), working both additively and subtractively.