Wild Pigment Project

form & concept | September 2022

This group exhibition, curated by Wild Pigment Project founding director Tilke Elkins, gathers pigments, artwork and stories from people who’ve engaged with the project since its inception. It traces the project’s extraordinary path, starting in Elkins’ home on Kalapuya lands (also known as Springfield, Oregon) and branching out across the world. This ambitious exhibition features the work of over two dozen international artists who pair their unique and sometimes ephemeral artworks with foraged pigments that form their personal libraries.

Initiated by artist Tilke Elkins in early 2019, Wild Pigment Project sprang from a question: what does it mean for artists of all kinds to work with materials they gather themselves in wild places—remote, rural and urban—and how do the artists’ personal, ancestral histories interact with the histories held in the land where they forage? For the first time, the artists who have made this project possible will be exhibited together. This is a rare opportunity to experience not just the dynamic range of expression possible through these wild pigments in painting, textiles, printmaking, ceramics and sculpture, but also the behind-the-scenes workings of the pigment-centric studios, fields, forests, vacant lots, kitchens and backyards where these works originate.

Wild Pigment Project has an Instagram following of 40,000, maintains an international listing of pigment artist/educators called the Pigment People Directory, offers reciprocal guidelines for working with wild pigments, hosts an online gallery, and generates regular funding for educational support for artists in global pigment study.

All artists in the show are contributors to Ground Bright, the monthly pigment subscription that supports Wild Pigment Project and generates monthly funding for land and cultural stewardship organizations. Through Ground Bright, the project has raised over $25,000 in reciprocal offerings to land and community organizations, and reached more than 2,000 subscribers in 17 countries.

The exhibit is the result of countless hours of dialog between pigment practitioners and artist Tilke Elkins, who founded the project and runs it with support from artist Noel Guetti, who fulfills the Ground Bright subscriptions each month. Tilke Elkins and form & concept will join in donating 22% of the proceeds from this exhibit to help fund scholarships at Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). 

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