pied midden: issue no.16 : overburdened : nina elder

*Raw copper mineral stones, for ’Overburden’ pigment. Photo by Tilke Elkins.*

vanishing land whales

How do you fall in love with a being many times larger than you are? By spending time together. That’s what artist Nina Elder has been doing these past few years: hanging out with an enormous glacier in the Wrangle Mountains in Alaska — the Root Glacier, a massive piece of ice that descends the face of Mount Blackburn. Nina has written extensively about her closeness to glaciers, most recently in a book called ‘Erratic.’

Glaciers are at once vulnerable and immensely strong. Glaciers carve and shape the landscape around them. They gouge and rip and rumble like bulldozers. They also are the measuring stick of climate change. I desire to be not rigid and inflexible, but to allow myself to feel vulnerable to the complexity of change. I want to be responsive to what surrounds me, even if that forces me to take on new forms. I want to move, and be moved. The surface of a glacier is covered with cracks and ripples, stretch marks and slumps, because it has changed to fit its surroundings. I feel empathy for this much larger than human entity. Caring for glaciers has taught me about loving something, even as it disappears.
~Nina Elder, 2020

Reading this description, and learning more about glacier-speak, I’m starting to think of glaciers as supple blue ice mammals, great whales of the land. Glaciers give birth to icebergs by ’calving,’ when huge chunks of their mass fall off into the sea. They even produce ‘glacial milk,’ the mineral-rich runoff that’s responsible for the brilliant turquoise water of glacial lakes. They scrape along on their bellies, reducing the rocks under them to a fine silt also known as ‘rock flour.’ And they move, about a foot a day, by riding the mud or pressurized pockets of water between their icy bodies and the bedrock.

Glaciers are made up entirely of hardened snow, compressed when the accumulated weight presses the air out of the spaces between the snow flakes. If they melt faster than they accumulate, then they appear to be retreating. One glacier Nina knows has gotten four and a half miles shorter in the last 20 years.

The shrinking of these massive creatures is, of course, in part the result of mining the earth for its stored-up energy in the form of fossil fuels. Mining has built the world as we know it today, and thus is at the center of everything that’s now understood to cause great harm to our planet. Nina recognizes this, and has been scrutinizing mines of all kinds as part of her creative practice for years, making large, intricately detailed drawings of open pit mines all over the world using dust gleaned from the mines themselves.

Nina uses her eye and her craft to seduce her viewers into looking at that which we perpetually look away from: the clear cut, the nuclear test site, the hideous apparatuses of radio towers, and the open pit mines. Most of us do our best to forget that those are the necessary evils of watching Netflix, going on a family road trip, building a tiny house, or laughing over TikTok. We don’t want to include these ravaged landscapes in our mental map of this continent, let alone be forced to behold them with our actual eyes.

*Kennecott Corporation: Grasberg Pit, Indonesia, by Nina Elder. 2016; graphite and pulverized mining slag on paper; 48 x 48. Image courtesy of Nina Elder.*

Through our often unexamined dependence on extractive industry, we create systems that stabilize dominant society, and in the process, destabilize the earth. Vast portions of the planet have been sacrificed to scraping, boring, gouging, digging, sucking, and shattering powers of industry. I uphold these sites as monuments to what has been destroyed and obfuscated in that process — ecological systems, Indigenous cultures, workers’ rights, and the interconnectedness of life. I am especially interested in the Kennecott Mine in Alaska because it is the birthplace of the Kennecott Corporation, the first multinational corporation and one of the most powerful entities on this planet. Alongside the beauty of Alaska’s wilderness, this one place reveals politics, power, and the greed of humankind.

~ Nina Elder, 2020

going in deep

“Read this landscape from distant to close,” writes Nina Elder, of the image pictured above. “Skies striated with cirrus clouds. River and rivers and rivers welcoming water of glaciers. Slopes and saddles of green mountain flanks. Acres of mining debris shifting and settling under my feet. Camera in my hand, full of mined components - copper, quartz, gold, chromium. My heart and breath catching as my body feels the pillage of this place. The boundaries between beauty and devastation blur.”

Toxic minerals are more common below the earth’s surface than above it. Some pigment foragers use that as a guide of sorts, saying they think most minerals you can just find on the ground are unlikely to pose much of a danger to you when smashed up for pigment. (This does seems to be mostly true, but there are exceptions, like umber or other high-manganese minerals… or minerals that humans have dug up to the surface through mining, perhaps unbeknownst to the hapless forager.)

Copper — the mineral featured in one of this month’s Ground Bright pigments — is poisonous. I’m not talking about copper metal here. Copper water bottles are a current trend because copper is thought to be antibacterial and antimicrobial, and because it’s a trace mineral we can’t live without, though we usually get what we need from foods like shellfish, potatoes and chocolate. No, copper is at its most dangerous in its raw form, especially when it’s being mined. Workers in copper mines wear protective gear, of course, but that doesn’t stop the high rates of lung cancer among copper miners. In considering the harmful effects of copper mining, we have this to consider as well as the poisoning of waterways and soil. Is all this worth bearing so that we can bask in the beauty of our beloved copper-based pigments: azurite, malachite, chrysocolla, Egyptian blue, Ploss blue, dioptase, blue verditer…? They are unimaginably lovely, it’s true.

can’t touch this

“Overburden,” is the name Nina chose for the raw copper mineral she contributed to this month’s Ground Bright. In true form for Nina, the name is both a technical term and a poignant fragment of poetry that reflects the whole. “Overburden,” she says, “is the term for material that must be removed from a mine so that the miners can access the mineral deposit. It is piled up and discarded.”

When she first wrote excitedly and told me she had some copper overburden to contribute, I was nervous. I asked if she thought we should be worried about sending people toxic pigment in the mail, and I told her I was a little afraid to spend a lot of time pounding it up in my mortar and pestle, even if I wore a respirator. She was very sympathetic, and said she didn’t want to impose her “weird art ideas” on me and my project. And, she pointed out, it’s interesting that we artists will “go out and buy copper-based pigments,” (I’ve done it, it’s true!) and “absolve ourselves from the mining practices or the human laborers who bare the brunt of the toxicity.”

I agreed, and together we decided that having me process and distribute this pigment would be a good way to bring all the implications of its use home — to me, and to all of you as well. We also agreed to include an extensive warning label in this month’s GB packet, to make sure everyone knows what they’re dealing with. In short, if you wear a mask and gloves and are careful with the pigment, you’ll be fine. I’ll do the same. Copper is not the most toxic artist’s pigment — cinnabar, orpiment and realgar have it beat — you just have to be careful with it. And perhaps, to lower demand for this toxic product, this will be one of the last times some of us ever use it. So let’s enjoy it!

*Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in fall. Image from the Gwich’in Steering Committee website.*

Not only does this month’s Ground Bright feature not one but two pigments (about one-third OVERBURDEN, two-thirds ROCK FLOUR), but the 22% donation money will be doubled, thanks to a matching donation from film composer Darius Holbert as part of his forthcoming work, An American Requiem: Elegy for the West. Thank you so much, Darius and Nina, for arranging this! Nina has chose to direct our contribution to the Gwich’in Steering Committee, which formed in 1988 in response to proposals to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. foliage

The Gwich’in homelands are in the northern part of Alaska and Canada, and the Gwich’in people have relied on the Porcupine Caribou Herd for thousands of years for physical, cultural and spiritual sustenance. The Herd’s calving ground is on the Coastal Plain in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a place sacred to the Gwich’in and known as “Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit,” or “The Sacred Place Where Life Begins.” This summer, Trump opened the National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. Biden has pledged that he will put a stop to this executive order. Regardless of what happens, one thing is clear: the Gwich’in Steering Committee needs all the support we can give them.

Not all blues are toxic — like vivianite, pictured here, from the files of Pigments Revealed, courtesy of Melonie Ancheta. Vivianite is an iron-based blue, not a copper-based blue — a very different story.

pigment news

I have a very exciting announcement to make: there’s a big new pigment resource in town. Pigments Revealed is an information and resource-rich website for people from all disciplines who work with pigments. It’s designed to be both a font of information (an online library of over 500 pigment-related documents! learning resources! guest blogs! a calendar of events! & more!) AND a pigment community discussion forum where you can connect with the global community of pigment people to ask questions and share information. You’ll be able to go there for links to pigment sellers, find workshops and demos, read about pigment practitioners, and look up articles about pigments that you can’t find anywhere else.

Melonie Ancheta is the artist and pigment researcher (and author of Revealing Blue on the Northern Northwest Coast) behind this incredible website, which she’s been envisioning and planning for for decades. The website offers both free and subscription content. If you sign up as a paying subscriber, you get full access to the Library downloads, inclusion in the Colorful People Profiles directory, the opportunity to post in the Events Calendar and contribute to guest blogs — plus a lot of other perks. I’ve signed up and I know you’ll want to too!

Another significant thing: Melonie is offering four different classes about PNWC Indigenous art and culture, and two paint-making classes. This is a rare opportunity to study with a teacher who has made unique and significant discoveries about how pigments were used in Pacific Northwest Coast cultures, such as Coast Salish culture. Melonie has been an important mentor for me, ochre expert Heidi Gustafson, and many other pigment students.

and that’s not all…

In addition to launching the Pigments Revealed website, Melonie is also directing the Pigments Revealed Symposium, which I announced here earlier this year. However, there’s an important update: the Symposium is going virtual. In a way it’s sad that this is a necessity, because pigments are so tactile, and it would be marvelous for us all to meet in person and enjoy them together. But there are some distinct advantages to doing this online. Many more people will be able to attend, and much less fossil fuel will be spilled. The Symposium will also be able to offer more sessions and provide more in-depth coverage of specific topics. If you have a topic you would like to see included, please contact Melonie at pigmentsrevealed@pigmentsrevealed.com.

Melonie also has this message for you all:

“In a few weeks, we’ll send out calls for art from those of you who are artists, and calls for papers, posters and presentations. We want to make sure you have plenty of time to create something that will knock everyone’s socks off! In the meantime, if you would like to submit, please fill out this submissions form. Stay tuned for regular emails about our progress, and updates on social media.”

Thank you, Melonie, for all the hard work you’re doing to put this together! It’s going to be life-changing for all of us, I know.

And thank you, all those of you who have shared your wisdom about toxicity in pigments and how to navigate protections for yourselves and the planet. Carrie LaChance (giver of much knowledge about mushroom and lichen inks and dyes — definitely a must-follow!), thanks for drawing my attention to the hard lessons learned by sculptor Gillian Gensen, a sculptor who suffered severe health damage as a result of exposure to the fine dust of the bones and shells she was grinding down to use in her work — bones which carry high concentrations of methyl mercury, arsenic, and lead, due to environmental pollution. The lines between toxic and not aren’t always where you expect to find them, and now is a great time to take excellent care of your lungs. :)

Stay Safe, Stay Tuned and…Get Some Good Rest!

<3 Tilke

*Ella, by Nina Elder. 2020, 36 inches by 54 inches, wildfire charcoal, industrial pulp mill waste, and graphite on paper. Image courtesy of Nina Elder.*

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pied midden: issue no.16 : overburdened : nina elder