pied midden: issue no. 21: red dirt the third: infra dig : caroline ross

** To listen to ‘Infra Dig’ by Caroline Ross, please scroll down. **

Red ochre fields above Devon. Image courtesy of Nina Cadzo.

oars divide the ocean

Here we are in April, on the last stage of the three-part journey that took us backwards in time and space through “three red dirts.” Quick review: we began with Occaneechi Shimmer, a mica-rich iron oxide gathered by podcaster/artist/herbalist Kelly Moody on the ancestral homelands of the Occaneechi band of the Saponi Nation. Ground Bright’s 22% was shared between The Homeland Project, which is buying back Occaneechi ancestral lands, and the Acres of Ancestry/Black Agrarian Fund, which preserves Black agrarian custodial landownership. Next on our backwards thought-journey came Ancestor Brown, a rich iron oxide pigment made with Jamaican soil and contributed by textile artist and educator Lucille Junkere, who examines the relationship of local indigo and oxide pigments to histories of enslavement brought to Jamaica in the 1500s. 

Considering the proposed theme of this journey — to follow, backwards, the tall ships that extended the Anglosphere to the continent where I now sit — I think it’s fitting that our third and final contributor, Caroline Ross, lives in a floating home on the River Thames, in England, in a tiny boat called the Crabapple. Perhaps the small distance from the shore affords Caro the perspective needed to take in the vast and criss-crossed history that led to the assemblage of her bones from English rock dust. That, and the depth of her creative (& tai chi!) practice, her vigorous self-questioning, her clear-seeing of the importance of essential joys. All these are woven into the warm and intricate letter she’s penned for us, for all her “pigment friends,” about where she and the land fit into each other. It’s a brilliant piece of writing — or speaking! If you prefer to listen to her read her own words — and I’ll soon step aside so you can delve in and behold what it means to her to be English.

Many of us descendants of English settler colonizers, in considering our English homelands, are paralyzed by the vast distances between us and our blood origins. How can we even begin to look back and make sense of what we see there? Though I grew up in the north, on flat lands by a river, one of the most ecstatic days of my life to date was one I spent following bluebirds over rolling green oak-filled hills in Northern California, far above the shimmering sea. I felt deeply, profoundly at home, and I never wanted to leave. I ventured out without food or water and returned nine hours later lost in revery. Oaks, rolling hills, and the sea. 

A poem comes to mind even before I understand why I’ve thought of it: “I never saw a Moor —/ I never saw the Sea — Yet I know how the Heather looks/ And what a Billow be.’  Less distantly separated from the home shore of her Anglo-Saxon ancestors, it seems Emily Dickinson understood epigenetics, the landscape memories held in the blood, the ties to places we’ve “never been.” Certain species of worms have been found to retain genetic memories of warm climates for fourteen generations after they’ve been removed to cold water. Do I carry the Moor in my blood too? I say, yes. Nina Cadzo does too, as you’ll see.

Image courtesy of Nina Cadzo.

three ochres, three friends

As a prelude to Caro’s”letter to pigment friends” — entitled “Infra Dig,” in a delightful deconstruction of that all-too-English term — I want to take a minute to present three specific pigment friends close to Caro who are woven into the story of this month’s Ground Bright pigment. Two of them gathered the Dart Ochres for Caro, who was house(boat!) bound in lockdowns and couldn’t get out to the Devon countryside as planned. The other friend, writer and thinker Paul Kingsnorth, who has foraged with Caro for ochres in preparation for the Wild Twins Course they offer together, reflects on an encounter with ochre. 

Westonfields Red by Nina Cadzow

A subtle sense of loss I grappled with through a significant part of my life was due to a lack of connectivity to the earth where my ancestors trod. I was born in an ex-British colony, in a dry parched landscape, wide horizons, dried up river beds and interminably vast vivid skies. On the walls of my grandparents house were pictures of verdant hills, cute thatched cottages nestling cosily like puddings in comfy clusters, (clearly indicating close knit community), and swathes of bluebells carpeting broad leafed woods. And of course there was the nostalgic narrative and a host of stories that went with that. They were suffering the plight of all migrants who find themselves, for a myriad of reasons, somewhere they don’t have a connection with. They pined for an often misguided idyll, forgetting that they left England due to hardship, poverty, lack of opportunity, lack of livelihood: The class problems of the Mothercountry were exported all over the colonial world.

It was in this climate of “unease” that I always felt I didn’t belong, I was always on the outside. Needless to say I ‘Returned Home’- Immediately the smell of the air, the dirt, the forests, the way leaves sounded in the wind, the undulating landscape, chirruping birdsong and soft baby blue sky were all recognised in a deep bone-blood level: a Visceral and spiritual connection; I have felt it and I know it, and I feel privileged to have been able to re-connect with this ancestral ground, this place I live, work and play in.

So I offer you some Red Devon Mud, which I have named ‘Westonfields Red’, a smooth and beautiful pigment that takes you from rusty rich red through to a delicate pastel pink, gathered from the fields above where I live.

Root Gifts by Anja Byg

That which should have been down is up; that which should have been hidden has been exposed. The tree once provided shade and shelter, transported water and minerals and transformed carbon dioxide and sunlight into energy and oxygen. It connected the above and the below in the manner of all great trees, and was itself connected with fungi, microbes and other trees in ways that mostly escape our above-ground oriented senses. Now the tree’s body is lying horizontally along the forest floor, dead, no longer an axis between heaven, earth and the down below, toppled over by a storm. Even so, the tree is still giving to the forest, is still part of the community: the fungi growing out of its wood, the beetles and other insects chewing their way through its stem, and I, who walk by, and you, who receives this.

When the force of the wind against the stem grew too much and the roots could no longer anchor the tree in the ground they took with them part of the soil in which they had embedded themselves. A slice of what was ground beneath our feet has been thrust upward into the sky, a latticework of roots suspending stones and clay, the holder and the held having changed roles and positions.

Cold hands now scoop some of the clay into a bag, feet move the body into a house, then onto a train. While the tree sleeps on in the forest and is slowly transformed into the lives of other creatures the clay travels to a big city, gets handed over, sorted, repackaged, sent off to another part of the world. It continues its journey, transforms into something else, travels to your hand. Where will it go from here?

Paul Kingsnorth 

'There is something very primal about painting with these natural pigments. Making them up in a mussel shell, experiencing the gritty texture on paper; but most of all, understanding where the colour has come from. They come straight up from the earth, and so nothing is imitated. They are what they have always been, and so painting with them is painting with the earth, in a very real way. There is a beauty and simplicity to that that even - or maybe especially - a bad painter like me can appreciate.'

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Thanks much, Anja, Nina and Paul! And now let’s lean into the wind and listen for the words of Caro’s letter…

Three Dart Ochres: Red, Bronze and Gold. Image courtesy of Caroline Ross

Audio comes to Pied Midden! Click below to listen to Caro read her “letter to pigment friends.”

Infra Dig by Caroline Ross

Dear pigment friends, I find I cannot write an essay today. But I can write a letter to you from the heart, from my desk, with the door open to the river, with geese honking and people paddling by peering in at the strange woman in her little boat. I hope you won’t mind. 

I am the last of three providers of ochre in this series which Tilke suggested, looking at the legacy of colonialism, working its way back to one of its main European roots, England, and more widely, Britain. I am no scholar, though I attempt to educate myself. For your interest, I am a white working-class woman (though did going to Grammar school and art college make me middle class? discuss) of mixed European heritage, quarter Scots, quarter English, half Yorkshire (The Brits reading this will get that joke). Those Yorkshire wool workers had fled strife in Russia and Poland, back in the late nineteenth century, ending up in the north of England. And so, my four grandparents made their living from working with wool, toiling on other people’s farmland, or sermonising from the Good Book. I was born and grew up a stone’s throw from the sea in Dorset, one county east from Devon, where this month’s Ground Bright ochres were dug. I just about consider myself a ‘Westcountry woman’, (like PJ Harvey, or Mary Anning, though not as famous nor as talented as either, but equally as partial to a self-directed life and a pocketful of fossils). There is a contrariness and an earthiness to many of us Dorset, Somerset and Devon women, I find. We go our own way, we are not prim, we might spend a good amount of time staring at the sea. Where I am from it’s all stone circles, whole rolling hillsides turf-cut with ancient white chalk running horses, or vast priapic men wielding clubs like the Cerne Abbas Giant. The humour of my land is there to take down the mighty. Dorset was home to the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the founders of Trades Unions, ‘transported’ to penal colonies in Australia. The TUC museum is still here, as are unions, thank goodness —  this week in Alabama the struggle they began continues against Amazon.  I want to say right now, that you can go and read unflinching histories of all that empires, including the British Empire, have done, as well as superb books about great Black and Asian British art and culture that ironically never would have happened here without that awful empire. Books, TV programs and resources are available at the click of a mouse. I particularly value the words and broadcasts of David Olusoga. 

The three Dart ochres I sent for Ground Bright subscribers come from the southwest of England, not so far from Bristol, infamous for being the heart of the British slave trade. Yes, that same Bristol famous for its young people just last year toppling into the harbour a statue of Edward Colston during rallies in support of BLM and against the murder of George Floyd, half a world away. Colston gave his name to famous halls and squares, a 17th Century ‘philanthropist’, rich from the Atlantic slave trade. Bristol, home to some of the first large Black communities in England, still always protests mightily against injustice: against the Poll Tax, against racism, war in Iraq, and it rallied hard for Extinction Rebellion. It is a city with a history of ground-breaking music scenes, reggae sound systems and trip hop. It creates alternative ways of living, ecologically sound co-housing projects that work against gentrification. Banksy comes from Bristol, too, it’s always had the liveliest street art scene in England. All of this is seeded and enriched by its thriving Black and Asian cultures, a truly diverse mix of people from all corners of the globe, a counterpoint to the otherwise incredibly white part of England, the rural south west. I speak of Bristol for those of you far away, so that you will go put on Massive Attack or some classic drum ‘n’ bass and get a feel for the rich creativity of this city despite the despicable original causes.  

And so we come to reversal. 

Image courtesy of Caroline Ross.

The ochres fly round the world from Jamaica, from Virginia, and now from a boat on the River Thames, barely 2 miles upstream from where Henry VIII plotted empire and uxoricide (wife-killing) at Hampton Court. Colonialism and the killing of women are not unrelated. Those who tolerate the former don’t tend to baulk at the latter. How do we turn this all around? We do it in our own places, in the ways that work where we are. We organise, lift-up and connect those who are already doing great things for freedom for us all, starting with help for those who need it most. In this context, I am donating the ochre proceeds to Land In Our Names, a grassroots Black organisation in the UK seeking land reparations, land-work equality and access to land itself. Here, not just race but class keeps us off the land. The Acts of Enclosure begun 1000 years ago never really ended. Right now, we are trying to ‘Kill the Bill’, a giant new raft of police powers to stop our rights even to peacefully protest. Friends, it is a bad time in England, rotten, in many ways. We are still ruled by millionaires who preach the rule of law but practice chumocracy and cronyism (that’s just English for corruption).  

And yet. The solidarity between disparate groups coming together these last weeks to protest femicide, racism and incursions on our freedom to protest has been amazing to behold. From every authoritarian impulse of our political overlords, new organising, action, and resilience is born. The Brexit omnishambles of my country, and our new inability to affect any real influence in the world may well turn out to be a good thing if the ridiculous rulers, who reflect most British people little more than do the Royal Family, could just shut up for a moment, a long moment, please. 

Ochres at the helm. Image courtesy of Caroline Ross.

In our homes this year of lockdown, countless ordinary people are doing the work of learning the real ‘horrible histories’ of our country. We are weighing the good and the bad, listening to voices of those who rarely got heard. In the streets, hospitals, care homes and shops, there is great, everyday solidarity, vast resources of shared humour, and of course, much sharing of that other product of empire which I admit I cannot do without: tea. I can’t tie up this saga neatly for you. I write, from a tiny Thames island where wartime speedboats and experimental submarines were secretly built for both world wars, to fight another empire also set on world domination. This island is nestled within the UK, an archipelago of over 1000 islands, The British Isles. A place which endured endless invasions and conquests: The Imperial Roman army, Saxons, Vikings, Normans – the last of whom brought aristocracy, fortified castles, class, and calamity to this land. Not to mention the 500 years of empire that followed Elizabeth I, and the carnage her successors wrought upon Ireland, Australia, Africa, and the Indian Subcontinent. Empire was no glory. The shame is not in the loss of it, but in the failure to face up to how much of the infrastructure of our nation was built on expropriation of resources and untold suffering of millions of people thousands of miles away. 

Part of me thinks, can Britain please just be quiet for a couple of decades and get to grips with all facets of its history, stop acting-out the invasions it suffered, stop trying to be something it isn’t? There would be nothing wrong with being a peaceful, cooperative, smallish country in the middle of two seas, full of great ideas, wonderful books, so many kinds of people, endless new music, prone to laughing hard and liking beer, or in my case, gin. So why the pretence, and all the ‘small but mighty’ flag waving crap?  

Because it’s strange, friends. That’s the one thing British people can’t stand about someone else. No matter what class, race, religion, or background we are from – everybody here laughs at a faker.  

British earth is full of rich iron ochres, hard grey granite, giant blue standing stones, soft chalk, fire-starting flints, supple clays, millstone grits, cave-filled limestone, a hundred different hues of soils, more than should ever be found in such a small country… The answers are right under our feet, and in our grubby hands if we would allow it. Everyone here, no matter where they ‘came from’, needs access to the land. It shouldn't be only for the few who can afford it, or who inherited it. Somehow, we must let the living land itself teach us of the multiplicities of ways of being and growing, the adaptability and interconnectedness of healthy community, which requires difference to thrive. All this and more are right here, in the web of human and more-than-human landscapes. But it requires humility and boldness from us in equal measure, an open-ness to change, to include, and willingness to get dirt under our fingernails.  

Ground Bright gives me much hope. We dig the dirt, literally. Together we look at and sort through things other people would find beneath them, infra dignitatem, (‘infra dig’, as the English upper class put it, in their Latin codeword, fake superiority).  

It is a lie. No handiwork, however mucky, is beneath our dignity. 

We can find only beneath our feet exactly what we need to raise all our spirits.  

 ~ Caroline Ross, 30th March 2021. 

Ah, thank you Caro, for the insight-rich tour! And for the friendship you offer to so many of us. :) <3

symposium updates

It’s now officially official: the online Pigments Revealed Symposium 2021 is happening this June 16th, 17, and 18th ( or, if you’re not PST, some time between the 15th and the 19th — check your location for times and dates!). I know this because, well, I’m one of three co-organizers for the event. Heidi Gustafson and I have come together with Melonie Ancheta to make her many-years-in-the-making vision of a cross-disciplinary international all-natural pigment symposium come true. I’m extremely honored to be joining these two fantastic humans in collaboration to create something that will bring the international community of pigment friends from all disciplines together in new, exciting, and, we think, lasting ways.

Philip Ball, author of Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color will be our keynote speaker. Thirteen other pigment peeps from all sorts of fields — art, geology, anthropology, archeology, soil science, conservation and on! — will also speak. There will be demos and mini-presentations and question-asking, and also some sort of virtual “place” to just hang out between events and talk to whomever happens to be there.

Heidi, Melonie and I will each be presenting, and we’ll also each be moderating a panel. Mine is called ‘Wild Pigments: Connecting Artists to Land & Cultural Stewardship.’ Melonie’s is a discussion of pigments and cultural heritage, and Heidi’s is about complex collaborative ochre specialness.

The symposium is distinctly not a commercial event. We’re doing this all ourselves, and we’re relying on admissions fees to cover the costs of the online platform that will host the event. The three of us have already invested many, many volunteer hours (the best part is getting to see each other’s little faces regularly! In screens of course) in visioning and preparation. Now, we need your help. What can you do? Attend the symposium! That’s it. If we have a minimum of 80 paid registrants, we can cover our costs, which include paying our speakers. We also hope to provide 20% of our participants with low and no-cost scholarships. We’re offering admission on a sliding scale that starts at $225. That gets you three full days of pigment fun with plenty of opportunities to ask questions and connect with each other.

We plan to donate 15% of any profits we make to a really great organization that Melonie has worked with, called Urban Native Education Alliance, which offers “culturally responsive and relevant support to Native youth and families through social, cultural, and educational support services.”

Join us and bring your friends!  We can do this together. Registration opens here on April 15.

open call for exhibition

Another thing I’m doing: hosting an un-juried show of art and images of peoples’ in-studio pigment processes. That means, if you make work with natural pigments, and you can clearly state the general geographic origin of all your pigments, you can be in the exhibit! It’s going to be on the Wild Pigment Project website, and you can upload your images right there, under ‘exhibition’ in the menu bar. Attendance at the symposium is NOT necessary to submit images to the exhibit — but if you submit, you’ll be invited to a gala event at some point during the symposium. Opens on Thursday, April 15th, same day as registration.

Thanks in advance for sharing your work, and for spreading the work to other artists you think might like to participate.

Ok, I’m about plumb tuckered out with all the excitement, so I think I’ll say so long and…

Stay Aboard,

<3 Tilke