qa’pai : october ’23
Tilke writes: “Qa’Pai is a Kalapuya word that means both “goodbye” and “hello”— a fitting name for a pigment unique to a season of decay and rebirth. Qa’Pai is a concentrated eastern black walnut (Juglans nigra) powder perfect for making a rich, dark brown ink. Artist and Wild Pigment Project founding director Tilke Elkins gathered the fallen black walnuts used to produce this pure black walnut hull powder in a park near her studio in Springfield, Oregon. The soft, squishy green-yellow husks were peeled from their nuts and left to dry in the autumn sun for several days, gradually turning a rich dark brown. They were then crushed by hand, blended to a fine powder and mixed with a small quantity of tree gum. The nuts were left for squirrels for their winter caches. The eastern black walnut tree was brought to the west coast by settlers.
contributor: Tilke Elkins
Tilke Elkins founded Wild Pigment Project in 2019 to foster conversations about the relationships between people and the places they collaborate with. The project raised nearly 40K in funding and had following of 50K on Instagram. Tilke Elkins is an artist whose current site-specific paintings exist in cycles of reciprocity with places. You can find her work at www.tilkeelkins.com.
Image courtesy of Noel Guetti.