pied midden : issue no.35 : being a good guest : sarah hudson

Still from Return, by Sarah Hudson, now on view in the Wild Pigment Project Group Exhibition. Image courtesy of Sarah Hudson.

love in action

I first interviewed Ngāti Awa, Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Pūkeko artist Sarah Hudson back in early 2021 for Pied Midden, Issue 19.5. I published an issue mid-month because I was really inspired by the pigment-centric, culture-reclaiming, community-building work that Sarah and the other members of Kauae Raro Research Collective — Jordan Davy-Emms, and Lanae Cable — were doing (these days Sarah is joined in the collective by Lanae and Kahu Kutia ). I had just read Mana Whenua, an elegant illustrated volume documenting Sarah’s process of connecting with 12 local Māori artists around earth pigments. I wanted to ask Sarah about the origins of her pigment practice and the collective, and what it meant to work with earth pigments today as a contemporary Indigenous artist.

It’s a fantastic, edgy interview, and if you haven’t yet, I highly recommend that you go back and read it right now, before you go on. This month, I interview Sarah as the September Ground Bright contributor, and her pigment is, in fact, not a pigment at all. Those of you who took in our first interview won’t be surprised by this. I’ll let you read on for Sarah’s full explanation of her contribution.

I’ve been impressed from the start by the balance that Kauae Raro seems to find between honoring and rigorously supporting Māori artists while also generously sharing content with the wider global pigment community. As momentum has gathered for the collective, they’ve continued to share perspectives on culturally appropriate ways to forage and work with earth pigments, intended both for Māori artists on their home turf, and for any interested artists working with earth pigments who are guests on the land where they forage. That’s the subject of this issue’s interview, as you’ll see. 

In my experience — which definitely has its limitations — I’ve so far connected with a fairly a small number of Indigenous artists here on this continent who publicly share about earth pigments. In the Wild Pigment Project group exhibition I’ve just curated, opening this month at form & concept gallery, there’s only one Indigenous artist from North America featured. Standing here where the gallery is, on Tewa lands / Santa Fe, New Mexico, in a place that so clearly has a complex and ancient tradition of working with the earth in all its hues, I feel uncomfortable, to say the least. I know there are reasons that I haven’t found my way to many conversations with Indigenous earth pigment practitioners, some of which I understand and some I don’t.

I recently consulted with a Native scholar and museum professional who put it bluntly: colonization has destroyed or damaged so much Native culture here that 90% of traditional knowledge is gone, she estimates. She mentioned the rage she experiences when clueless settler people from the mostly white “ancestral skills” crowd ask her to please share her Traditional Ecological Knowledge with them — knowledge she doesn’t have because her cultural lineages were destroyed or damaged. She pointed out that most of the knowledge taught today among these ‘ancestral skills’ groups was gleaned by white university students from documents recorded by white anthropologists and archeologists at the turn of the 19th century as the cultures the knowledge belonged to were being wiped out — documents that most Native people can’t easily access. Sometimes, she said, when called to, it’s the responsibility of the non-Native people who do carry that knowledge to humbly return it to the cultures it belongs to by sharing it back. 

It’s also been explained to me that because of colonizing histories, some Indigenous communities are protective of pigment knowledge, much of which is ceremonial and can’t be shared. I’ve been fortunate to connect with Indigenous practitioners like Wilson Wewa Jr., Deborah Jojola, Marlena Robbins and Christy Long, who have shared some aspects of their pigment practices with me. The more I learn, the clearer it becomes to me that this work is, for me at least, about being part of a circle of reciprocal learning, sharing and deepening trust and connection.

Approaches to the ethics of foraging and pigment work differ widely. If you’re someone interested in spending time with these pigments yourself, you’ll navigate your own values and find a practice that resonates for you. What resonates for me can be summed up in a comment made by Christy Long, who is a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. She says: “You don’t always have to have all the answers. But you have to have […] love and honor.”

Action Required, Sarah Hudson’s Ground Bright contribution is….not a pigment.

interview with sarah hudson

WPP: How has working with earth pigments through the lens of Kauae Raro contributed to your personal studio practice since we last spoke in early 2021?

SH: Kauae Raro Research Collective has shown me the power of community. It’s the first time my practice has been so ‘outward’ facing; prioritising reciprocity and generosity. Over the past 18 months I’ve begun to appreciate that the act of connecting with people and places is the art. My ‘solo’ practice has involved building relationships through artistic and cultural expression, sharing skills, and sharing time with others. It’s shifted from physical artistic output to relationship building as the art/cultural practice. 

WPP: I can really relate to ‘relationship-building-as-art-practice’! :)

Your pigment contribution to Ground Bright this month, called 'Action Required,' is, in fact, an empty envelope. Well, not entirely empty. The envelope contains a sweet metal/goth graphic for Kauae Raro. On the reverse is an invitation for Ground Bright subscribers to join you for an exclusive hang-out hour on Zoom. This empty packet represents some important truths for you as a Ngāti Awa, Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Pūkeko pigment practitioner and community member. I'd love to hear about its significance.

SH: Through my work with Kauae Raro Research Collective, we practice a connection to the land through kinship, reciprocity, and responsibility. These considerations pertain to the land and extend to the indigenous people who belong to those places. We model one way to creatively and consciously engage with earth pigments as a medium we’re genealogically bound to. We are exhausted by the exploitative use of natural resources that are extracted on indigenous lands and for others to financially benefit. In response to this, we have taken the stance that Kauae Raro does not sell earth pigments. Another extension of this stance is that I do not feel it is appropriate to send our land offshore. 

So when you first came to me with the idea to contribute to Ground Bright, my first thought was - no way! But just like my practice, where relationship building is the art, I thought I could contribute in a way that upholds my cultural beliefs AND can potentially build relationships beyond my physical reach. 

Still from Return, by Sarah Hudson. Image courtesy of Sarah Hudson.

WPP: It’s such a brilliant way to go. When I approached you earlier this year about contributing to Ground Bright, I did so knowing that sending ochres away from home wasn’t an option for you. I sort of took a leap, thinking that if we came together on this, something new might spring forth. I had no idea what that might be, but I figured you, in typical fashion, would probably have an extraordinary idea. In so many ways, your approach to my invitation answers questions I’ve had since the beginning of this project about pigments, land, and cultural contexts.

Since we last spoke, Kauae Raro has really expanded what it offers through the website, which now includes a directory of Māori artists working with earth pigments, a series of instructional videos on how to forage and make paint, produced in both English and Māori, and many insightful essays by a variety of artists on important cultural topics. In our last interview, you said that you hoped Kauae Raro would “bring waves of Māori artists using whenua in their practice and pushing the boundaries of its application.” This has clearly happened! Are there any specific new collaborations, developments, or plans for the future for Kauae Raro that you’d like to tell us about?

SH: We have recently been through an 'open call' process via our Instagram where we asked our community to share the creative ideas they have with earth pigments. Through government funding, we're able to financially assist 12 Māori writers and artists to contribute to kauaeraro.com. Their work will be highlighted on our platform over the next year and we are thrilled to be able to facilitate sharing of this knowledge. 

We're holding workshops on a regular basis now too, at least once a month - which breathes new life into our practice. Contributing to our community through spending time and sharing is a conceptually simple act - but so much has come from creating a space for participants to 'play with mud'. As artists, we can readily spend our time being inquisitive and experimental; we've found some magic moments of joy with our workshop participants when we've reintroduced the idea of mixing water and earth and making a mess. Granting that 'permission' to play has been a wonderful reminder of how important it is. 

Still from Return, by Sarah Hudson. Image courtesy of Sarah Hudson.

WPP: Wow, it’s going to be an exciting year! I can’t wait see it all unfold through the website. Thanks for the update!

On October 4th (5th in Aotearoa!) when you meet with GB subscribers, you’ll be discussing your film, Return, now showing at the Wild Pigment Project Group Exhibition. Return evolved during a residency program away from your ancestral lands, correct? May I ask, how did working away from your home contribute to the evolution of this piece?

SH: I applied for the Caselberg Trust Residency on Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe and Waitaha lands with the Tūhoe concept of 'matemateāone'. This term has extensive layers of meaning, but one that I like is the sense of longing for AND belonging to the land. Up until that point, I had not experienced what my earth pigment practice looked like away from home. I wanted to conduct myself the way I'd appreciate others would conduct themselves on my ancestral lands. I developed an exhibition called 're: place' which was held at Blue Oyster Project Space in Ōtepoti, Aotearoa. The entire show was created from land gathered while in residency at Whakaohorahi; there was an earth pigment archive, unfired clay pieces, video works, and earth pigment paintings on canvas. After the show, everything was returned to the land or gifted to people who belong to that land. Nothing was for sale, no binders were used on the canvases and they were washed back in the bay in which I initially gathered them. This was not my land, and I was not going to financially benefit from it. 

During my time on the Caselberg Trust Residency, I connected with a local Indigenous group who have spent the last few years reconnecting with their stolen ancestral lands through replanting native trees. After an earth pigment workshop they shed light on a Kāi Tahu word, 'manuhiritaka'. This is another big robust concept but from my understanding, manuhiritaka is the reciprocal active responsibility, of being a guest. It was heartening to go onto someone else's land with matemateāone in mind, and come away with a whole new appreciation for manuhiritaka. 

This is now an embedded part of my practice, something I wanted share with Ground Bright subscribers. From my perspective, earth pigments are land - the prompts I have developed are for artists to check in and question, 'how am I being a good guest?'.

WPP: Amazing! These are such powerful insights, ones that chart a genuinely respectful relationship with land. You’ve introduced some valuable concepts here, including the idea of offering works made with materials from a place to the people who are from that place. This acknowledges the relationship of belonging between people and place, by making it explicit that art-making and the results of art-making are also part of the land, gifts the land gives back to itself through the people there. That feels like such a significant revelation.

Some synchronicity: around the same time you were at your residency, I was developing pieces for a solo show that’s just opening this month. For the past few years, most of my work has been what I call “painting-with-place” — painting on surfaces with pigments, often found right there on the same site. But since I was invited to make work for an indoor gallery space, and I really do love drawing, painting and creating imagery, I decided I would make the paintings and then wash them off later, so that I could return the pigment to the land where I gathered it, the way it’s returned when I paint in place. I’ll be selling the old boards that the pigments are sitting on, and the very special “pigment reclamation cloths” woven by textile artist Noelle Guetti, but the pigments themselves will be offered for “rent” only. All the “rent” money will go to a Kalapuya group working on a land rematriation project in the territory where the pigments originated.

Hearing your approach, and your suggestions for being a good guest, I’m thinking maybe instead of just returning the pigments to the land in a solitary way, I could offer some of them to people who belong to that land, in a yet-to-be-discovered form.

Huge thanks to you Sarah, for all the inspiration your work brings and for engaging this project in such a vital and revolutionary way. I’m really looking forward to spending an hour with you and Ground Bright subscribers in October! See you soon. :)

***A note to readers: If you’d like to attend the hour with Sarah on October 4th/5th, you can do so without subscribing. All individuals donating over $22 to Wild Pigment Project before October 4th PDT, will be sent a Zoom link to the event. To donate, please go here. 22% of your donation will be passed on to Kauae Raro.

Also, Sarah would like to share this link to her video, Return, which documents her slowly washing color from a dyed material back into the Ōtākou harbour where the color originated. Enjoy!

(end interview)

Still from Return, by Sarah Hudson. Image courtesy of Sarah Hudson.

finally, finally

Friends, I’m tired. It’s a good tired, though. I’ve spent the last two and a half weeks helping install the group Wild Pigment Project exhibition at form & concept gallery…and, save a couple of small but important details, everything is up on the walls or gorgeously supported by myriad shelves and pedestals.

Earlier this week, I think I may have overheard the gallery’s large-hearted director Jordan Eddy saying, “This is the most complicated show we’ve ever installed!” With 28 different artists, 22 of whom are exhibiting pigment sets containing between one and 24 pigments, this show has a mind-boggling number of moving parts. Each artist has a wall tag listing the details of their work, their pigment set, and a brief description or quote, crafted by me, that gives a window into their work. Each wall tag is accompanied by the small glassine packet — or packets, if they’ve participated more than once — which contains their contributed Ground Bright pigment.

Ok, I’ll say it: I’m feeling really proud of this show. Proud of all our hard work, and proud of personally sticking through the challenges of putting this all together. Everyone involved has been, without exception, kind, supportive, patient and appreciative. The form & concept staff have been utterly incredible through this whole process — especially, in these last couple of weeks, Operations Director Brad Hart, the installing wizard who has been with the gallery for its 17-year-long journey. I can never thank you enough, Brad!

My “solo” show (I’m joined by the work of my partner, textile artist Noelle Guetti) is also nearly all installed, also thanks to Brad’s hard work and ingenuity. He built swings for my paintings to ride on! There are three large swinging paintings, a wall of plant shadow records, and some piles of leaves, plus a delicate pigment-reclamation cloth woven by Noelle, and an incredible jumpsuit she also wove, designed and sewed for me to wear once I’m out painting plant shadows on cliff walls.

please come

Here are the dates of interest if you’re in Santa Fe:

September 30th from 5 to 7pm: the in-person opening. Surprise me! And also if you happen to be in town on October 14th, I’ll be giving a workshop on making pigments from the urban waste-stream from 2 to 4 (by donation) and an artist talk from 4 to 6, same day.

Virtual Event: Come Celebrate with us!

On October 11th at 2 pm Mountain Time, I’ll be hosting a combination event/virtual celebration. The event is ‘Pigments As Catalysts for Action, Decolonization, & Healing: a Story-Sharing Event’. Nearly a dozen of the artists in the show will tell brief stories about how pigments have served as catalysts in their lives. Story-telling will be preceded by a virtual tour of the gallery so you can take it all in. Please go to form & concept here for information on how to attend.

If you can’t make it to any of these events, fear not. The gallery is in the process of uploading the entire show to their website. Over the next few weeks, images of ALL work and pigment sets will be up, along with lots of text by and about each artist.

Hope to see you soon!

Stay Active,

<3 Tilke

Postcards for the show! Group show card, on the right, features a detail from mushroom-dyed textile by Julie Beeler. :)