Here comes color

"It is by colour alone that a certain stone tells us it is a sapphire or an emerald”

— David Batchelor, Chromophobia

Introduction to my exploration of color

You wouldn’t know it by the way I dress, but in my mind there are colors. And textures. And shapes that tell stories. And since I aim to communicate with these yarns and through them, I began experimenting with pigments and dyes to add color to them. Not just any colors, of course, “pop” colors: from city culture, from the contemporaneity of my mind, from my optimism, from the artificiality and excess consumption in which we live. And in a somewhat contradictory way, also from the colors of the Andes and from the much needed diversity. I'm really into this whole “color” thing.

-Perhaps because I see that it’s lacking, or that it’s needed. Perhaps because,

at the peak of mass culture -where we’re so controlled and blinded by an excess of data or repetition-

even colors hurt. Because at the height of diversity, we turned difference into a boundary.

-Let everything from this side of the line be white; let everything from the other

side be black. And let the spectrum of colors be discarded, rejected,

condemned. Let us not think in terms of shades, of pinks, of color wheels.

Let us not think at all.

Food coloring

As a first attempt at achieving a bright, artificial color -made by humans- I tried the “easy” method I saw on social media: food coloring. It turned out to be a disaster.

The color is gorgeous: bright and stable. But as soon as the yarn starts to “sweat,” forget it, it sweats color partout. In Spanish, we say that a yarn or fabric "runs" or "stains", instead of "bleeds". But I really like the word “sweats” because, after all, what I’m trying to create here is a second skin.

Some samples:

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Artist Kee Avil invited me to incorporate the yarn into her visualizers, and I took the opportunity to experiment with various colors

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Turmeric + green food coloring. I loved this color. I made a crochet sample using this green + pure algae yarn, which has that translucent white color. At first everything was fine, but over time the green food coloring bleed into the white, as shown in the last 2 photos

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Blue food coloring. Here we can also see how one thread dyed another through contact. I really liked the translucency and the effect it creates on a surface when light passes through it. We used this blue thread in Kee Avil's visuals

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Now that I know how to create colored alginate pieces that interact with one another through transmission, a new expressive possibility has opened up. I like this finding. However, I was still wondering if I could create vibrant colors that are stable and strong, capable of coexisting without losing their identity. For that reason -and for no other- food coloring is dismissed.

-for now.