sable wave : december ‘20
Thomas Little, this month’s Ground Bright contributor, describes the origins of Sable Wave this way: “You first assemble a cast of nefarious characters. Cold iron is mixed with hydrochloric acid, a volatile fuming corrosive, to make an equally corrosive and poisonous ferric chloride. To this you add lye, the king of the caustic. The solution gets too hot to touch. You wait. Slowly a black precipitate forms under clear water. The products formed are non-toxic black iron oxide and salt water.” This ferrimagnetic oxide of iron or “magnetite” is the the most magnetic material on earth. It guides eels to their breeding grounds in the Bermuda triangle, and monarch butterflies to Mexico. It’s in the beaks of homing pigeons & in the frontal cortex of the human brain. It is, says Thomas, “quite literally, the compass of the animus.”
contributor : thomas little
Thomas Little is an amateur ink historian who explores mystic and scientific concepts through the lens of ink and our relationship to mark making. He gathers threads from alchemical imagery, chemical phenomena, and mystic observations to incorporate them into a holistic synthesis theory of art-science-magic. The natural world informs his work with ink, not only the materials used, but the relationships expressed between plant, animal, and elements.
Photo by Thomas Little