pied midden: issue no.4 : telephic red : thomas little
Originally published September 27, 2019
alchemy for the anthropocene
This month's pigment contributor to Ground Bright, Wild Pigment Project’s subscription pigment packet is every bit as nuanced, storied, and dare I say, alchemical as the intricate, multi-layered transformative pigment he’s cooked up for us.
Thomas Little of A Rural Pen Inkworks is not only an ink magician who manifests arcane ink-blot scrolls, he’s also a poet. So I’m handing things over to him for most of this newsletter. In what follows, he shares his illuminating reflections on ink, red ochre, and iron-as-medicine, in addition to the details of his process in crafting Telephic Red, Ground Bright's October pigment (if you're not subscribed and you'd love to receive Telephic Red in your mail box mid October, you still have two weeks to sign up!).
What follows in the next four sections was penned by Thomas.
ON INK.
The finer differences in paint, dye and ink can be described technically in solubility and chemistry, though the same material can be used in all three. ‘Ink,’ the term more often associated with symbol-making, is what I prefer to call the solutions I create. There is intimacy and delicacy with ink. Ink is pigment on a small scale. A barn can be painted, a bed sheet dyed, but ink is reserved for private spaces and offices of the mind. Though the coloring matter may be the same in the paint bucket and the dye bath, once in the inkwell it becomes curiously precious. Perhaps this is because it represents our potential for expressing our ideas. In this way, ink is the substance of the abstract in its most distilled form. As the substance of abstraction, it performs wonderfully in the theatre of ambiguity. While on hand it is precious, it is at the same time utilitarian, ubiquitous, and prosaic.
This is a testament to its supernatural power. Inkwork is ultimately and essentially magic. It is imbued with this capacity, in part, by the simple act of agreement about what a symbol represents. In the interstices of minds, ink adapts its shape. Here it is vulnerable to exploitation. Our agreements are called into question through obfuscation and propaganda. This results in a numbing and hardening of our views and an isolation of our thoughts, setting the stage for zealotry and extremism. Violence is enacted through words and weapons.
A reconcilliation is necessary, a medicinal grounding of the over-excited power of abstract stimulation. A reconnection of substance and symbol to enrich and empower our essential truths.
ON RED OCHRE .
Red iron oxide, or red ochre, has been the substance of symbol making for millennia. It, along with soot, is one of the oldest inks. It is the profane and sacred. Profane as it is, quite literally, common as dirt, and is in such abundance it is indeed used to paint barns. Sacred because of all the holy offices in which it has been employed, from Paleolithic cave paintings to ancient Egyptian papyri to the rubrication of holy texts. It has a hundred names, as poetic as the "Saffron of Mars" and as blunt as "rust". It is primal and protean, a vibrant reminder of our blood, our mortality.
In myth, its role as ersatz blood has saved humankind. In Egyptian mythology, Ra sent the lion-headed goddess Sehkmet to devour humanity after feeling that they no longer respected him, as he had grown old. Sehkmet slaughtered humankind, drinking their blood. When there was only a remnant of humans left, Ra was satisfied, but Sehkmet was not and continued to glut herself. Ra ordered his temple priestesses to brew beer and grind red ochre in vast quantities. These were mixed and poured on the sand. Sehkmet, thinking this was blood, lapped up the great flood and fell into a stupor. When she woke her bloodthirst had ended. Humanity was saved. A similar story can be found in other ancient cultures.
The synthesis of iron oxide by alchemists in the roasting of green virtiol, or iron sulfate, is well documented. It is one of the substances known as the "Caput Mortuum" or "dead head" refering to it being the unreactive residue left over in the chemical operation. It is this unreactive quality, its molecular stability, that makes its such an enduring pigment. This process of roasting iron sulfate is used to create the pigment known as "Venetian Red."
Speculatively, the art of the alchemist has been used to harness the sanguineous symbolic power of red iron oxide. The annual miracle of Saint Januarius, in which an ampoule of the saint's blood re-liquifies, has been documented since the 1300s. Analysis of the substance has been prohibited by the church, but it has been proposed that the substance is a clever suspension of red iron oxide. In essence, a venerated ink.
ON IRON AS SYMPATHETIC MEDICINE.
Iron compounds' efficacy as medicine in the modern world is undeniable. The green vitriol of the alchemist is the iron supplement that combats today's anemia. This compound, the material from which red iron oxide can be obtained, also has its history as a healing substance in sympathetic medicine.
The tradition of sympathetic medicine spawned the doctrine of homeopathy, similia similibus curantur, "like cures like,” which is akin to the "hair of the dog that bit you" saying. In 17th century Europe, a cure known as the "Powder of Sympathy" was common among practitioners of sympathetic medicine. This Powder was none other than iron sulfate and was used as a weapon salve. To heal the wounded, one rubbed the Powder on the weapon that caused the wound, or in other instances, soak the bandages in a solution made from the Powder.
(It is curious to note, the Powder was recommended as a component in solving the time-keeping problem in sea navigation. Given that mechanical clocks were unreliable on a swaying vessel, and time-keeping was crucial in navigating, it was proposed that a wounded dog would be kept on board the ship. On the mainland, where time could be more accurately kept, the dog's bloody bandages would be treated with the Powder everyday at a predetermined time. The healing action would cause the dog to yelp, and thus provide a standard by which the captain could mark time's passage.)
Perhaps the origin of this practice can be found in the ancient Greek epics. In the Cypria, prequel to the Iliad, Telephus is wounded by Achilles' spear. The wound is not fatal, but does not heal, leading Telephus to consult the oracle of Apollo, who says ὁ τρώσαςἰάσεται, "your assailant will heal you" a phrase very akin to the doctrine similia similibus curantur. Later in the epic, Telephus visits Achilles and achieves a cure with the rust of the spear being scraped into his wound. Here it is iron oxide that effects the sympathetic cure.
ON TELEPHIC RED.
The above stated parameters of philosophy, myth, and practice provide the Alembic in which Telephic Red, the pigment I prepared for Ground Bright’s October subscription offering, was created as a liquid incantation.
The first part of the work is to neutralize the weapon. The weaponry used in Telephic Red includes two guns, a Remington and a Smith & Wesson, dismembered and dissolved in sulphuric acid. This yields iron sulfate, the Powder of Sympathy, its potency compounded by being derived from a weapon itself. This is cleansed in fire and transformed into iron oxide, the ancient red of symbol-making, the sacred symbolic blood.
I co-mingle this synthesized red with a natural ochre, gathered from a forgotten place near my home in North Carolina. Here large red boulders once dotted an otherwise sandy flat landscape. What ancient history this place might have had is long forgotten, though it is locally notorious for being a place of ill repute. Violence is enacted here, people and weapons can be procured, and misery can be forgotten through readily available substances. It is a place of poverty, of drafty plywood shacks and leaning single wide trailers. Like many places like it in America it is ignored, a willfully manifested lacuna in the landscape. As such, the spectacle of the red boulders was also largely ignored, serving only as a backdrop for old photographs. The boulders were later destroyed to develop the land for farming. The piece I used was shaped like a heart and given to me by my brother as an x-mas gift. I think about what this red rock meant to the people that once lived there, what practices they used it for. It is a powerful pigment substance, unlike anything for miles, and I cannot help but believe that it was a landmark and perhaps a holy place.
I mix the ancient and forgotten red with the medicinally charged red to begin the reconnection of substance and symbol, the reunion of the sacred and profane, the returning of weapon to earth, a compound healing process. It is a libation to Sekhmet to quell violence. It is a small mundane miracle to be observed and celebrated. It is the sympathetic medicine for the hardened mind, to unclench itself from current affairs and relax into a deeper time. It is the red we remember collectively in our common history, our blood that we share as a people with our planet. It is magic medicine, this profane and precious ink.
~ Thomas Little of A Rural Pen Inkworks
wild pigment project news updates
A vision I've been gestating for a while has recently come into being, in the form of a weekend workshop I'm offering this February. The workshop is dubbed 'Palette Remediation,' a term I came up with for what I do. The idea of 'remediating' artists's palettes -- in the sense of to restore by stopping environmental damage, has long served as a guiding light on my path as an artist. Now, I'm inviting other artists who want to shake off the easy allure of synthetic pigments to join me and tap into a condensed version of ten years of experimentation with paints, surfaces, inks, and other art materials gleaned from ditches, riverbeds, canyons, and meadows. Ultimately, palette remediation is about new ways of thinking about both color and the land. What can be replaced? What can be reframed? How might petroleum-based materials and wild pigments co-exist on the palette?
I find myself among so many artists, researchers, crafts people and foragers who are asking these questions now, it's astounding. This movement, after being quiet for so long, has some serious legs -- and for good reason. Anyone electrified by Greta's recent words knows why.
Pictured above: the heart-shaped ochre rock that was all that remained of the mysterious red North Carolina boulders, part of which was ground and mixed into Telephic Red. All Telephic Red-related photos in this newsletter are courtesy of Thomas Little
Addenda:
I’ve been writing about Thomas Little’s Telephic Red and all its many magics in so many places that I almost forgot to mention in Issue No.4 the very reason that Thomas called his pigment into being: to channel October’s 22% Ground Bright donation funds to an incredible organization called Lead to Life. Lead to Life performs another kind of alchemy on guns — a healing alchemy of regeneration and justice.
Here, please just go watch this stunning video.
Lead to life unites social justice, art practice, ecological restoration and climate resistance by transforming weapons into shovels used for tree planting ceremonies in places impacted by violence, and places that carry ceremonial significance. Lead to Life founders Brontë Velez and Kyle Lemle met in 2016 as inaugural recipients of the Spiritual Ecology Fellowship — and this is some serious spiritual ecology.
The alchemizing of weapons into tools for planting has its roots in the ancient practice of “swords to plowshares” and also draws inspiration from Mexican artist Pedro Reyes. In 2008, Reyes worked with the Botanical Garden of Culiacán and the Mexico City authorities to invite the population, through a series of T.V. ads and radio announcements, to exchange firearms for vouchers and electric appliances. A record number of firearms were donated, and then crushed by a steamroller, melted and re-moulded into 1,527 gardening tools, that were used to plant 1527 trees.
Lead to Life, based in Atlanta, Georgia and Oakland, California holds “gun melting transformation” ceremonies (gorgeously depicted in the above-linked video). Families who have been affected by violence take turns placing guns in the fire to be melted down. They use the shovels forged from the guns to plant trees, and add soil from lynching sites to the tree roots to promote healing justice.
Last two images courtesy of Lead to Life.