Where could you have come from?

Palette of the Month 002: Lost & Found

Sometimes I find pigments. Sometimes they find me. What does it feel like to be lost? What does it feel like to be found?

◯

Part one: red

I thought I found something rare in the Huron river. A rock that smeared red. In Michigan, there aren’t any significant deposits of red ochre, which are iron oxide pigments rich in vibrant colors (usually reds to yellows) accumulated in layers in certain place on Earth. I was excited but a little bewildered when this color emerged from this river. Where could you have come from?

I kept picking up rocks and giving them the scratch test.

The scratch test:

Near any water source, find rocks and scratch them on the most solid, large and smooth rock you can find. If color comes off of the rock you are scratching with, like chalk on the sidewalk, it is a great rock to grind into pigment. It’s easier when the rock is wet. It also makes you feel like a child. How natural it feels to draw with a rock? Children know. They don’t have to ask or be told.

Creamy red river mystery

And just like so, I found more. One by one, different reds emerged. Orange-ish, pink-ish, purple-ish.

Where could you have come from?

I always talk about finding things. Finding a patch of flowers, finding some rocks. But in this instance, I felt as if these reds were finding me, arriving at the shore of the river bed.

I took the reds to the studio and let them dry in the sun. Once they did, I discovered exactly what they were. Can you guess?

Select river specimens, organized neatly.

A portion of your subscription will go to the Huron River Watershed Council - a local nonprofit working to protect the very river I found the reds.