Back to Earth Pigment

After making the lake pigments, it dawned on me I already had clay that was dug from the Northampton Community College (NCC) “East 40” part of the campus. Last year when I made loom weights for my warp-weighted loom, I carefully scooped the finest clay from the top of the barrel knowing it could be used as pigment. It was still wet in the jar. 

I discovered that the same spreading out on the glass thing worked perfectly to dry what I’m calling “NCC Gold Ochre” for it’s origin and color. I find it just extraordinary that clay dug from the earth-right on a campus where I work-can be converted into pigment with sifting/straining, water, gravity, all simple manipulations. After the super water-logged lake pigments that took considerable amounts of spreading out to dry, I found the NCC gold ochre yielded a lot of finished powder pigment by comparison.