Color = Energy

Color is energy, the colors of sunlight, of emanations from the great Star itself, flooding our world with blues and greens and reds and yellows. Don't get me wrong-- I love my black tees but black is the color of sleep, of night, of the absence of light and energy. It's a great background for a starry display. Although it is the combination of all colors together, black subtracts light, and therefore color, from our world. A “black hole” is called exactly that for a very good reason-- it swallows light.


The colors of Vermont's landscape are vibrant now with summer but in a very subtle way. Just as the native American peoples of the far North have a hundred words for snow, there are a hundred colors of green in my backyard. Our flowers are not the riotous palette of the tropics but rather the occasional splash of bright but diminutive blossoms amid the green of grasses and meadow hay. I recall picking tiny native strawberries nestled among orange and bronze Indian Paintbrush in my uncle's field when I first visited Vermont the summer I was seven. They are still my favorite Vermont wildflower.

I usually experiment with earrings or beads when I'm trying out new color ideas. Small shapes, easily completed are just the thing to play with on a lazy summer's day. If there's more potential there, they become elements in a necklace or bracelet. Here are some of my favorites from the last few weeks' work, using colored pencil and some “garbage” cane-- bits and pieces and leftover ends-- made into a mokume gane veneer.

Sands of Mars bead - idea from the work of Rebecca Watkins

Leaves of Grass earrings

We Are the People earrings

We Are the People earrings - detail

Latitude earrings

Latitude earrings - detail