02 . 22

sawkill creek : february ‘22

‘This pigment,’ writes Adi Blaustein Rejto, ‘is from Sawkill Creek, a tributary to the Esopus Creek, that feeds into the Hudson River in the lower Sawkill. Since I’m white and an occupier of this occupied and stolen Lenape land, I don’t feel comfortable giving formal land acknowledgements nor using the Munsee name of the Esopus, Atkarkaton. The truth is I don’t know the story of this land and the people and life from whom it was taken, and in the midden of confusing feelings I have about stealing even more land from this earth – I know how important this land has been for me.

I have come here when I didn’t know where else to go. To be held by the creek and the quiet woods. And I’ve come here to celebrate, I have brought loved ones to have fun and be joyful. And I come here to sit with my hand in the clay on the bank of the creek and my feet in the water. I wait until I feel a warmth in the earth and then only take what I need, often only a jar or a cookie tin. 

To get enough pigment to send in this batch, however, I had to collect a bit more. I foraged the first half in October 2021, when the ground was still warm and the water was…moving. When I returned in January, the water was frozen, the rocks were covered in ice, and the clay was cold. As someone who is often not prepared, I didn’t have any crampons and couldn’t cross the creek to get to any of the clay that is on the far bank. So, the other half of the pigment gathered is from clay that was closer to the woods and the roots of trees. I’m assuming that this has less natural clay binder and may make a weaker paint film. But regardless, it will be Sawkill pigment.’*

*A note from Tilke: I tested the pigment and it seems to have lots of clay stickiness. When mulled, it’s very smooth and holds well.

contributor: Adi Blaustein Rejto

Adi Blaustein Rejto is an artist whose paintings incorporate foraged pigments with synthetic oil paints. Adi writes, of their process:
‘Pigment foraging and paint making turned my painting practice into a multi-layered symbiosis: I expunge the poison from the earth to recompose it as the material with which I transfigure the grief and trauma inhabiting me, recomposing it in scenes of joyous rupture. I thus transform my understanding of how capitalism’s devastation of the planet is linked to the devastation of my psyche and inner life. These ruins contain the possibility of life and recuperation; my painting practice is the hinge on which the door to this reconfigured world swings. Paint making has also expanded my scientific understanding of pigments and paints to a personal and political relationship to my own art materials and where they come from—the social relations and historical processes embedded within them’

See more of Adi’s work on Instagram @yourchildhoodfriend_ad or on their website.