Ceremonies for Being With, on view at the New Mexico State University Museum, as part of the Wild Pigment Project Group Exhibition (July 22nd through September 16, 2023) is a painting made with site-foraged minerals on found plywood at the spot where the wood was washed ashore by the winter tides, at the mouth of the Salmon River on Nechesni lands (colonially known as Cascade Head, Oregon). Produced during an artist residency at the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology in February 2023, the plywood board that holds the paint is available for sale, while the pigments are offered for “rent” only, by the year, to be washed off and returned to the Salmon River when the rental period ends. All rent funds will be directed to the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology to be offered as stipends for the Indigenous Place Keepers artist residents.
The painting is accompanied by a recording of text, written and read by Tilke Elkins. Listen here.
CEREMONIES FOR BEING WITH
Ceremony for Seeing and Being Seen
Your eye seeks other eyes. The eyes of the birds are often too small or too fast to see. The eyes of seals merge with the shining domes of their heads. The eyes of otters are avoidant. The eyes of elk are deep and watchful but it’s impolite to stare back.
Your eyes seek out the eyes of the land. Without trying, your eyes scan the ground at your feet for other eyes. Rocks with improbable round shapes at their centers. Worn driftwood with perfect circular holes where the knots have fallen out. Circular puddles in the tops of boulders.
Gather the eyes that can ride in your palm. Walk a few paces. Feel their weight. Examine their circles, their layers of geologic mystery. Arrange them on a log or on the other rocks, facing you. Let them take you in.
Feel the seals, the otter, the chirping eagle, the diving ducks, the seagull, the fox sparrow, the golden wren watching you. Feel the eyes of the sun and moon watching you.
Ceremony for Being With Color
See the thin band of red earth in the cliff that rises over the rocky beach. See the red rocks, the ones that looked at first like brick shards worn by the waves, scattered occasionally between all the grey and brown rocks on the beach. Pick one up and smooth it with your fingers. Feel its greasiness, like dense lipstick. Lick your finger and make small circles on its surface. See the deep red appear on your finger pad. Feel the strangeness. Feel the specialness. Feel your heart speed up.
The next day, walk past the red seam. Walk over the brown rocks and the grey rocks and the white rocks. See a rounded yellow-orange rock wedged between two brown rocks. Pull it out and dig your fingernail in. Feel the softness. Pinch it between your thumbs and the sides of your index fingers to break it in two.
For the next two weeks, pick up rocks. Hold them, walk with them, put them down. Place them on logs according to color and texture. Hide them under the logs when you leave. Sometimes, don’t. Carry some up the hill with you and crush them in a stone mortar and pestle. Back on the beach, crush them on flat rocks and mull them with smaller flat rocks. Carry water to those rocks in a large broken clam shell from a stream down the beach. Spill half the water. Find flat rocks within arm’s reach of the stream instead and sit there, using the broken clamshell to scoop water onto the mulling stones.
See the unusual large round white stones below the high tide line. Cover one with the red ochre paint. Feel suddenly exposed. Feel dread. In the morning, check to see that the tide has taken the red paint away, It has. Decide not to paint the white rocks again. Find a large weathered piece of plywood with a frayed yellow rope tied through a hole in the top. Decide to paint this, instead.
Make tiny piles of each of the colored rocks you’ve crushed on a large flat stone. All the colors, as many as you have. The dark red ochre, and the paler pink ochre. The deep bright yellow-orange ochre that came from that one rock. The slightly paler yellow bright ochre that came from several rocks. The three blues: the one that came from the puzzle rock that collapsed into hard blue shards when you lifted it. The one that came from the pale blue vein in the sand that was edged with thin sulfurous yellow. The slightly greenish sandy one that was encased in beige ochre like an egg. The dark olive green one that looks brown whenever it doesn’t look green. The pale yellow that crumbles audibly from the cliff next to the place where you paint, making sounds like someone small creeping up behind you. The black, charcoal from a massive burned stump that was reluctant to give up its charred scales, making you promise to use every speck you broke from it.
Just as you scoop all these out onto the flat rock, listen to the quiet inner voice that says, not yet. That says, wait. Stop, and wait. When the hard rains start not long after, feel grateful. Instead of leaving the beach, go the other way. Find an improbable cave under a boulder, nearly overtaken by surf, deep and high enough to stand in. Feel the humanness of this place. See where the edge of the boulder has turned from yellow to red, as if calcined by a fire. See the small notches in an ascending line on the side of a rock face, like a ladder. See the bowl-like depressions in a large rock by your foot. Feel the subtleness of stone architecture. Watch the heavy rain blowing in waves on the surface of the ocean. Feel dry and cold.
Hear the voice that says, now. Find a thin flat rock like a plate or a tray, and squat down. Use the flattened end of a stick to scoop the dry color powders onto the stone tray, in an array of beauty. Use smaller rocks for levels. Drink in the colors with your eyes. Their abundance. Their miracle. Feel the stone walls drinking them in. Feel a thirst, there. Know that you will leave them. Know that to leave them in plain sight would interrupt an unspoken agreement. Know what the right thing is.
Step to the edge of the overhang and place the tray just beyond it on the ground in the rain. Watch as the drops land on the piles of dusts sending up soft puffs of color. Watch as the colors turn dark and run into each other. Watch as they run off the tray.
Walk back along the beach in the almost dark. There’s a yellow you’ve never seen before, a big piece, smooth and dense. Put it in your pocket. Walk. Wait, there’s a green, the one you’ve found only once before. Is that it, really? It’s almost too dark to see. Yes, that’s it. Put it in your pocket. Before you can take another step, there’s another one, a blue this time, perfectly soft. And here, a new dark purple. Here, a soft white. Your pockets are heavy, and you’re laughing. There’s all the color you could ever want to give back to this place.
Ceremony for Being With Rain
When the rain starts, gauge its speed by watching the dots of darker color appear on the painted surface of the board. When the dots come faster and cover the surface evenly, lower the board, paint-side-down, to the rocks. Sit down. Watch the spaces between rain dots on each rock narrow and then disappear as the whole rock darkens. Consider getting up but see that the rocks under your legs are still light-colored with a few visible dots. Stay with the rain.
Watch the waves, close and loud at high tide. Feel the urgency of their sound pressing in. Watch the surface of your boots and the thin fabric or your rain paints and jacket darken. Feel the gentle pressure of the rain on the tops of your arms and legs. Feel the gentle pressure of the rain on the top of your head. Feel cold but dry. Feel patient. Feel the efficiency of sitting quietly in the rain instead of hurrying away. Feel the safety of water. Feel the sadness of waiting.
Hear a sharp chirp from a nearby log. Watch a small golden wren disappear under the log. Long to see the small golden wren. Watch the small golden wren’s head appear suddenly three feet from you from under the log with a sharp chirp, and instantly disappear. Feel the sadness of waiting lift.
See a crumble of yellow ochre by your foot and set it on the top of a flat rock. Crush it with a smaller rock and let rain fall on the crushed rock. Feel the effortlessness of instant water. Mull the rain into the rock until the paste is smooth. Scrape it off with your finger and into a half muscle shell. Set the shell under a large thin rock to keep more rain from falling in the paint.
Feel an openness, as the tide pulls away and quiets, and the sky gets light. Jump up. It’s still raining, but so much less. Raise the board at an angle and crouch under it with the shell of paint. Apply the paint to the board with your finger, in a circle, using your fingernail to make the edges crisp. Watch small specks of rain blow on to the undersurface of the board. Feel unconcerned. Finish the circle and reluctantly lower the board as the rain darkens it.