For Easter, we visited my family, who had just moved into their new property (40 acres near Oregon City). Most of the property’s soil is a deep red clay. This soil is what reignited the idea of this art project in my mind. I thought that it might make a nice pigment.
As luck would have it, when we visited, my sister’s foundation on her new house was being installed (my sister, her husband and kids live on the same property), and there was a huge mound of dirt from which I took samples.
While I was there, I was able to do a couple of tests on the soil. As I didn’t have time to finish them, I smuggled some back to Canada with me.
But, I was able to create a slurry (i.e. mud) and let the contents settle. There turned out to be a fair amount of silt on this particular sample. The idea is to use the silt as a pigment.
More on this soil and my results up in Canada on the next post!
