Interview: Heidi Gustafson Recounts Establishing an Archive Preserving Hundreds of Humanity’s Oldest Art Materials
All photos © Heidi Gustafson, Early Futures, shared with permission
The phrase ochre tends to be related to the nice and cozy brownish-yellow coloration, though it additionally refers back to the bodily substance that after faraway from the earth, crushed, and mixed with liquid, turns into paint. In a brand new interview supported by Colossal Members, we converse to forager, artist, and researcher Heidi Gustafson, who established the Early Futures Ochre Sanctuary in 2017 and has since amassed lots of of samples of those pigments.
Whenever you get into the character of coloration (akin to tracing meals from farm to desk), you begin to understand coloration symbolism has lots of direct, strong foundations in geomorphology. Pink that feels “intense or energizing” is usually product of 500 million-year-old historic volcano spew. Yellow that’s “sunny” is perhaps ochre made by spring daylight interacting with microbes to create contemporary iron hydroxide. Blue that feels “mournful or religious” may very well be constructed from vivianite (iron phosphate) forming in useless our bodies.
On this dialog, Gustafson speaks about Early Futures, its evolution, and what it’s meant to work with a substance with such a wealthy and prolonged historical past. She discusses the multi-sensory and generally uncanny nature of her course of, the risk the local weather disaster poses to the earth’s shops, and the way ochre’s legacy reaches far past its alluring coloration.
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