CHROMA: Orange

In 2019, four members of the Hana Kark Collective — encaustic artist Caryl St. Ama, painter Margaret Lazzari, mixed-media artist Nancy Kay Turner, and I — began a collaborative project using color as a commonality. It became known as Chromatic Collaboration. We each worked independently to create 25 birch plywood panels, 6” x 6” each, for every primary and secondary color. We started with blue, intending to work our way through the spectrum, with no clear idea of how we would ultimately assemble the work or where the process might lead. Our first exhibitions, mid-process, were in September 2019.

Orange was the second color. I set out to try different hand embroidery stitches, since I tend to fall into a rut and rely on the few I know best.

Continuing my commitment to buy no new materials, I worked with scraps of industrial waste fabrics and offcuts from interior fabric headers. I painted, dyed, and printed the base fabrics, then layered them and stitched them together by hand and machine. Each stitched piece is laminated to 3/4” baltic birch plywood.