pied midden: issue no. 31 : tell your stories : caitlin ffrench
Caitlin ffrench with Clearcut Ochre. Photo courtesy of Caitlin ffrench.
tell your stories even as you listen
This month is a quiet time for me. I’m painting, and the non-verbal space that painting gives me allows inner evolution to happen differently than it can through conversations and writing. There’s a lot going on in the world to respond to and to grieve, and I feel the cascade of subtle inner changes that result from wanting to act and needing to reflect before I do. As I give some space for these processes to unfold, I’m making records of places that hold me, not as they look to a photographic aperture, but as they feel to a set of eyes that moves through space in a body — a tall stalk on legs that can crunch down into a ball or stretch up, that can move backwards and under and all around. Eyes that meet light on one side and imagination on the other, fixing images in memory with an equal measure of both.
These records I’m making with pigment on plywood — which will appear as part of an exhibition series this fall — are shadows that give context to the pigments themselves. When you hold a seashell to your ear, you get a poetic audio message of the wide sea that once held the shell. So how do rocks transmit the places they belong to? Some say smell.** Some say sound, their crack or their thud. Others might tell you it’s the feel of a stone’s curve in the palm of your hand. Can that transmit whether they once lay smooth on a river bottom or came tumbling out of a jagged cliffside? I’m visual. I want to tell the stories of the stones and earths I work with through weird images: half-maps, half-pictures, that record what at least one pair of eyes (mine) took in in the places the rocks spend time.
Detail from work-in-progress, Nothing Gold Can Stay, by Tilke Elkins. Photo by Tilke Elkins.
These are my stories, told with paint. The telling of personal pigment stories is what builds the kindred feelings that so many of us who love to work with the dusts of plants and rocks celebrate and take comfort in. I can get lost in the telling of other peoples’ pigment stories, and forget to tell my own. My family culture taught me not to talk too much about myself lest I seem insensitive, self-centered, and disinterested in others. It would appear that this sentiment was passed down by several great-grandparents: when I start to move backwards in time for genetically relevant story material beyond the past three generations, I’m met with conspicuous voids. My parents each have a few ancestors they’re proud of (the ones who were musicians, writers and artists) but neither my maw nor my paw is known to pore avidly over family trees. From what I can tell, my ancestors seemed to have lugged around a lot of dark, heavy furniture and an unfathomable quantity of unremarkable crockery, both of which took up more presence in my life than their actual histories. When I consider the colonialist migrations that my ancestors pursued (I’m the product of English colonizers in three Commonwealth colonies: Canada, the US and Australia) I can’t help but think that perhaps there’s a reason that our family tales were allowed to go quiet, that so many modern people with white privilege pay no more attention to their ancestral family stories than they do to the boxes sets of small china teacups they have piled up in storage. There are things no one wants to see. But that doesn’t mean I should stop looking.
Telling your own story is an act of courage. If you’re going to ask, you’d better be ready to tell. And no matter how brief or how simple, personal stories are open hands held out in the dark, points of potential connection that we use to pull each other close. This month’s pigment contributor is Caitlin ffrench, an artist living in East Vancouver, BC. This fall, Caitlin will be pursuing an interdisciplinary master’s degree at Emily Carr University. Her thesis is “telling the story of place through colors, using earth pigments and natural dyes.” Like Caitlin, I’ve been storing my pigments with cards that record my personal circumstances at the time of collection — little stories — ever since I first began to forage. But unlike Caitlin, I’ve kept those stories private, afraid that they weren’t important enough to share, or afraid to share them because they felt too important. I admire Caitlin for her courage to be vocal about what matters to her, whether it’s personal moments with rocks, or fierce proclamations of the sacredness of reproductive rights (see @ffrench).
Caitlin ffrench at SIM Residency, in Iceland. Photo courtesy of Caitlin ffrench.
Caitlin’s work has stories of connection and friendship at its center. A natural dyer and ceramicist, she sees pigments through multiple stages of transformation — from rubble to paint to ceramic glaze, for example — and many of the fruits of her labor find their way into the hands of friends she knows. She’s also in the habit of leaving secret gifts for strangers in unexpected places. Like so many pigment people, Caitlin is an extremely generous teacher and shares her knowledge abundantly through community courses and regularly in videos on Instagram and TikTok. Caitlin has MS and walks with a mobility aid, which, she says, gives her time and space to notice pigments everywhere. As you’ll see, although Caitlin has relationships with several different landscapes, both urban and not, she does much of her foraging in ditches, construction sites, and parking lots — evidence that pigments are anywhere humans are.
Her contributed pigment, called Clearcut Ochre, was gathered in a clearcut on Vancouver Island, and will direct funds to Ada'itsx/Fairy Creek Blockade, a volunteer-driven, grassroots, non-violent direct action movement dedicated to protecting the last stands of globally significant ancient temperate rainforest on Vancouver Island. Caitlin writes, of her experience, “Walking into a clearcut forest feels very heavy and to be able to work with pigment from this land feels like it is one step closer to healing what was lost. This pigment tells the story of damage but also of hope. Here’s to the renewal of the forest and to remembering what we have lost.”
Photo courtesy of Caitlin ffrench.
The forests inhabit the unceded territories of the Pacheedaht and Ditidah First Nations. The Fairy Creek Blockade is on record as one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in Canadian history, with a total of 1,188 protestors arrested so far (919 for contempt of court for breaking an injunction! 222 for obstruction! 22 for “mischief”…). Indigenous involvement in the campaign has been significant. Although the Pacheedaht First Nation elected leadership was not supportive of the protests and even, on occasion, asked protestors to leave in 2021, Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones, who, in his 80s, is the direct descendant of the family line claimed as the hereditary decision-makers, has been a significant participant and leader in the campaign. He has repeatedly called on elders to join the protests. In June of last year, both hereditary and elected chiefs of the Huu-ay-aht, Ditidaht, and Pacheedaht came together to sign the Hišuk ma c̕awak Declaration to take back their power over their ḥahahuułi (traditional territories), giving formal notice to the province of B.C. to defer old-growth logging for two years in the contested areas while the Nations prepare forest stewardship plans. The proposal was approved. 2,000 hectares of old-growth forest are involved in the plan.
The volunteer group that has locked themselves to tripods, braved “sleeping dragons” in roadways, and stuck out the battle in the woods for months in defense of the ancient trees says that there is still much to be done. Ultimately, they’re calling for logging companies in BC to prioritize ecological health over economic growth by providing sustainable jobs in second and third growth forestry. “We are all one,” says Elder Bill Jones. “Private interests and corporations can no longer ignore the well-being of society. We are all in this together.” This month’s 22% will go to support the group as they continue to champion the lives of the ancients. I encourage you, dear reader, to offer your support to the campaign directly, here.
Instead of doing a regular interview, I asked Caitlin if she’d like to share a pocketful of her pigment tales with us. Seeing an opportunity to blend two of her favorite formats — story-telling and color wheels — she painted a color diagram specifically for the newsletter, highlighting each of the pigments she used with its own little vignette (see diagram below!).
Enjoy, dear reader! I think you may resonate with many of the moments Caitlin shares. Who among us hasn’t found ourselves squatting eagerly in a ditch with our fingers in the mud? Well, if you haven’t, you may soon…
** Re: the smell of rocks: Those of you who were present for the evening segment of the PRI launch this May 1st were privy to an especially delightful discussion about the different olfactory pungencies of various pigments — thanks for that, Heidi Gustafson, Tea Ghigo and Philipa Jahn! I had to agree with Heidi about those pigments that send me right back to kindergarten thanks to their chalky-sweet tempera paint scent.
16 Pigments, Foraged or Grown by Caitlin ffrench. Photo courtesy of Caitlin ffrench.
Key to: 16 Pigments, Foraged or Grown by Caitlin ffrench. Image courtesy of Caitlin ffrench. See Stories Below.
pigment stories, by caitlin ffrench
Caitlin writes:
Instead of doing a traditional interview, Tilke asked if I’d be interested in writing a little about some of my favourite pigments and where I found them. I think that every pigment is special and that telling each pigment story is more than just saying where you gathered it and how it was processed. I think that any storytelling you can share alongside the pigment helps the viewer to feel what it was like at the time of gathering.
I like to keep notes on where I gathered the pigment, the time of year, if I had friends with me, what I was listening to when gathering, and any other information that can help give life to the pigment story. These notes also help future me remember what past me was thinking and feeling. Past me is always quite kind to future me — sometimes even leaving love notes for me to find from myself.
The pigments I’m sharing with you today are some of my most prized pigments, and they hold some of my best memories. As I’ve been writing about these pigments I’ve been mulling them into watercolour medium and making a painting that incorporates them all together. I think that this is the best way to honour their collective stories.
1. North Island Red. I gathered this pigment while I was up on the north end of Vancouver Island in February 2022. I found a vein of this bright red pigment in the midst of a clear cut. The day was sunny and I almost missed seeing this beautiful colour amidst the wreckage of the lost trees. I gathered a small handful of it and processed it into usable pigment as soon as I got home from the trip. This colour is special because I gathered it on a long awaited (and needed!) trip out of town with my partner. We were able to spend 5 days in a cabin, exploring logging roads together. This colour will always remind me of that beautiful week.
2. Red Volcanic Stone. This stone was found in the parking lot of the Samband Islendskra Myndlistarmanna (SIM) artist residency in Reykjavik, Iceland. I attended the residency in the summer of 2019 and gathered the colours of the city. Often the artists attending the residency gather stones and sticks on their adventures and then don’t want to fly home with them… so they put them back out in ‘nature’ (the parking lot). This is a great source of pigment stones for me! It was a small red volcanic stone and ground down easily.
3. SIM Brick. This is another pigment gathered in June 2019 in Iceland. It is a chunk of a brick from a torn down building beside the SIM residency. Bricks have some magical property to me — they’re made up of ochres and binders to create building materials, are shipped around the world, buildings are made with them, and they sometimes are torn down into nothing. A strange and wonderful way to get ochres from around the world!
4. Northern Red. My dear friend gathered this on the summer solstice in 2019 while she was in the north end of Iceland. I processed the pigments she gathered that day and I was able to keep some for me, and the rest went into the work she was making. When I met her I loved her instantly — we became fast friends, and we are still often in touch. It is a heartfelt red colour that I think is full of magic and collaboration.
Pigments. Image courtesy of Caitlin ffrench.
5. Ochre Band Reykjavik. This is a funny one. I was walking with a friend from the SIM residency to the pool on the other side of Reykjavik and we walked past a street construction site where I saw this pigment. It was in front of the Culture House Museum on Hverfisgata. The city was having work done on the sewer pipes in front of the gallery and there was a massive hole in the road. There were fences around the hole but I was able to squeeze my arm under the fence and grab a handful of this ochre. The friend I was with couldn’t stop laughing at how in love with dirt I am, and it makes this one of my favourite pigments.
6. Ditch Beside a Lake. This is another Icelandic Pigment. My partner and I were driving past a lake in the middle of nowhere and we stopped to have lunch and watch birds. It was a really rainy day and the area beside the lake was covered in wet clay the got stuck on our boots, so I gathered the clay from our boots and stuck it in a sandwich bag. I levigated it when we got back into the city and dried it out to bring home.
7. Utah Ditch. Another ditch pigment! I was on a road trip through the western US in February 2019 with my partner and a few friends. We were travelling to see as many earthworks and artworks as we could in 10 days. We camped in some spots (and stayed in hotels when there was too much snow), and this pigment was gathered from a ditch on the side of a highway after waking up to a freak snowstorm. It was freezing cold and the pigment in the ditch was more ice than colour, but it reminds me of this beautiful trip with three of my favourite people. It also reminds me of waking up to a layer of ice on the tent because it was so cold the night before!
8. Torn Down Building. On a walk in January 2022 with my partner I went through the wreckage of a building that had just been torn down. I found chunks of a bright yellow brick and processed them into useable pigment. I am so impressed with the brightness of this colour, and my heart is enthralled by bricks.
Lake rocks. Image courtesy of Caitlin ffrench.
9. Sea to Sky Ditch. I think I spend a lot of time in ditches! This pigment is from the side of the Sea to Sky highway just North of Vancouver. I was on my way to go hike up to Cheakamus Lake and spotted this pigment. It was a chunk of rock from a slide on the side of the highway, and I took a piece that was about half the size of my palm. This pigment is also really great when used as a paint on bisqueware and then fired to cone 6.
10. Benny’s Firepit. My pal Benny lives up in Sqamish Valley on an acreage. He dug out a firepit last autumn and invited a few friends to come up and have a fire. Before we started the fire I noticed the pit was bands of 2 colours of clay! I asked if I could take some home and he was stoked I could do something with his ‘pit dirt’. I have big plans to make mugs for Benny an his partner that have this pigment painted on the outside — giving them back their dirt in a useable form. This is one of my favourite ways to share pigments with my friends: putting them onto useable ceramic things.
11. Madiera Park 006. I was the artist in residence in May of 2021 at the Fibreworks Gallery on the Sunshine Coast. In 5 days I was able to gather and process 16 earth pigments and dye with 18 natural dye plants that I wildcrafted. This is one of my favourite colours from that week- a dynamic yellow green that is beautiful on it’s own, but even better when painted beside other colours.
12. Ear Shaped Stone. I found a stone that was shaped like an ear in a pile of rubble I an empty lot in Reykjavik. It was a very light feeling stone. It was bright green, and I loved it. I smashed it and ground it down into useable pigment and fell even more in love with it. This minty colour is a pop of life in any painting, and when I’ve used it on ceramics it turns deep red. It is one of the most precious pigments I’ve ever gathered.
Ear-shaped stone / pigment. Image courtesy of Caitlin ffrench.
13. 2020 Indigo. This is the first extraction of my 2020 indigo crop. 2020 was a terrible year for all of us, but it was the hardest year of my life. In the week that I was diagnosed with MS my partner was hit by a car while riding their bike and broke their back (among many other injuries). The whole late spring/summer was a blur of medical appointments and just trying to survive these terrible things during a pandemic — but somehow I kept our garden happy and healthy. Our indigo crop that year was incredible, and this is some the pigment I processed. This blue is the colour of resiliency. I am so thankful this colour exists to remind me that I can keep going.
14. Vivianite Spruce Cone. In 2019 Scott Sutton (@pigmenthunter on Instagram) came up to Vancouver to give a lecture on pigments. I attended and made friends with him, and he gifted me a vivianite spruce cone that he gathered on the Oregon coast. This is one of the most magical pigments in my collection, and I treasure it. I’ve slowly used small parts of it in paint, as ceramic glaze, and to gift to friends- but I’ve saved half of it to live in my collection (for now).
15. Makoto Ochre. My friend Makoto and I went for a hike just outside of Vancouver just before the pandemic hit, and I gathered a stone that I ground down into this pigment. Getting to have pigments that I name after the dearest people in my life is a treat, and whenever I work with this colour I am reminded at just how great this friend is and how lucky I am to have them in my life.
16. Discarded Stone (Iceland). This was another discarded stone behind the SIM residency in Iceland. Being able to take something that someone discarded and make something beautiful from it is one of the best parts of wildcrafting pigments. Wildcrafting colour isn’t just for doing in pristine places — some of my favourite pigments are from piles of rubble or from ditches. There really is magic everywhere.
~ Caitlin ffrench, May 2022.
Caitlin at Sun Tunnels in Utah. Image courtesy of Caitlin ffrench.
a quiet outro
Thank you, Caitlin, for sharing your prism of tales here with us, and for connecting us to the old-growth forests through Clearcut Ochre!
There’s so much coming this summer — I have a couple new Wild Pigment Project endeavors nearly ready to share with you, and, of course, the exhibition series at form & concept in Santa Fe is building momentum. I’m in awe of the amazing work that’s going to be in this group show.
For now, I’m going to leave you with the visions of Caitlin’s pigments, and go back to my record-making.
If you feel like writing, do drop me a line! Have pigment stories you want to share? I love to hear from you. It really makes my day/week. You can hit “reply” or write to me anytime at info@wildpigmentproject.org.
Stay With Us,
<3 Tilke
Pigment jar in Tilke’s studio. Photo by Tilke Elkins.