 I was born in Colombia, in the Andes, Colombian Andes that is in Bogota, and that is Haya 3000 meters elevation above sea level. And I grew up in this kind of mountain region, but in a very large city like, I think, Mexico City, something really oversized, like almost 30 million population, which is the population almost of Canada or something like that. But only for one city, so I grew up in a very verbal environment, but always with the mountains behind me. And that, there's actually something that I recently acknowledged, and it's that in Colombia, because you might know there's conflict, violence and all these things, accessing natural spaces is not as easy as doing it here. Here you might fear bears or other things, but there you fear different things that are sometimes you might get robbed or you might get kidnapped in some instances. So it's kind of a raw reality to acknowledge, but actually it's a reality that I actually, when I moved to Canada, I started to actually explore the natural world in a different way with more freedom. And I think that is what really allowed me to access the knowledge of plants and the gifts of plants in a different way. Of course there's stepping stones to get to that place, but I just have to want to refer to that reality just so you understand my context and where I come from. So I was born there, grew up there, and for a time I actually am a visual artist, went to university, did different studies in sculpture installation, and that's where I come from, from sculpture. And then I worked as a community-engaged artist, and furthered that here when I moved to Canada. Working there in kind of my early 20s, I was an outdoor instructor and I accessed natural places from a recreational point of view. And where you really access the natural world more as a backdrop and as a container of your own experience, rather than a relational approach to the natural world where you're actually acknowledging leading beings that are actually containing your experience that you are relating to it in a different way. So that was more kind of recreational, adventure-focused, right? Nature is my kind of device to access, to maximize my experience, right? That, travel across like Central and South America doing that. Then when I immigrated to Canada, this is a different story. After some years in doing community-engaged work, I started taking courses that created a game changer was a day when I attended a witness ceremony at the Brown Coast Community Center this is years ago. And that really changed my heart, actually, in a different way, and I lensed to see the natural world. It was a long witness ceremony, but really didn't have anything to do with any of art creating or anything like that. It had more to do with like actual ceremony and actual seeing really things with a different lens more an intersection of spirituality and also relational approach, right? And also understanding the principles of indigenous peoples, right? I also kind of went back to a little bit working as a community-engaged artist. I also worked in cultural arts and cultural programming. And my connection to Westminster is really interesting because I used to be the community arts supervisor at the Frederick Lincoln Gallery here from Western, but just renovated. Are you from Western, by the way? I don't know. Yeah, the Frederick Lincoln Gallery is this beautiful heritage building and I was in that position for about three years and then it hit. So we all kind of lost our jobs as you might know or got paused and then that really changed the course. Another thing that really changed kind of the way I related to art making was my mentor and friend Sharon Collins and her practice. Do you know Sharon? So Sharon was the first person, I actually before the Frederick Lincoln Gallery worked in an arts programming capacity and I knew Sharon from an arts programming capacity kind of engaging her to deliver arts programming and then I attended one of her benefits community events and she was teaching how to make rope out of daily leaves. That one teaching transformed my relationship to art making because by then she showed me how to really work with even garden trinities that would go to the ring in otherwise, right? And the moment I started to make rope and got kind of like in that zone something happened internally. I kind of now seeing it retrospectively see it as my kind of ancestral DNA of work. It's kind of like the awakening of like how am I supposed to be doing this rather but I wasn't doing it. Someone just showed me a path. My body felt engaged, my mind, my heart, everything felt engaged in one action that didn't need division of like knowing you feel compartmentalized and you're ready somewhere and you're ready somewhere else. It's kind of our daily thing in kind of Western culture somehow. This felt true to me and really was kind of giving me back my humanity in a way if I can explain that somehow. So from that, that was the starting point to now opening a world of possibilities with working with plants, with garden trees, with food waste, with wastage, et cetera, et cetera. And from that, then on, I used to work with different mentors, indigenous and non-indigenous, right? And also YouTube university and all the things, right, that are accessible to us these days, books, et cetera, right? Et cetera, et cetera? Oh, you know that word? Of many avenues that knowledge gets communicated. So that's me, Juliana. And well, now I, after the pandemic, we moved to the island as a family. If I had two kids that were born here in Canada and with my husband we started a new life a year and a half ago, almost. And anyway, that's pretty much in a nutshell me. I really wanted to start with positioning the relational aspect to plants because to me that actually is more important than even the art making, so to speak. Why? Because we come from a heritage of extractivist mindset, right? Of functionality, of really seeing things for what they can do, their performance. And we actually see ourselves in the same, with the same lens, right? Always measuring capacity, performance, et cetera, et cetera. But we don't stop to just be, right? Just be an acknowledge and just don't expect deliverable from people, from things, from plants, right? That's why I really wanted to start with that and hand out a little pocket card that I created with the honorable harvest. And this teaching comes from the book. One of my most favorite books called Breaking Sweet Grants. The author, Robin Wolkimer, put the language to words that were practiced in her own Potawatomi culture. How that is a foundation for the work we do. Or for the work I want to do and want you to do. Of course, you can keep accessing plants whatever way you want but this is an invitation for you to kind of refrain. And also, start building relationships with those plants that we're asking their gifts from, right? In this particular case, their color. Another source really great is called also reciprocal foraging. Not the honorable harvest, but the principles are the same. Start with like acknowledging, introducing ourselves to the plants, right? That sounds sometimes for some people like crazy. You talk to plants, you know? But in a way, like I have experienced it from my personal kind of journey with plants. It really makes a whole difference. They talk about like even whatever you can fit in a handful, like in your hands but they even say it with one hand actually, you know? So of course it depends what you're harvesting. If you're growing your own things, if it's worth eating or for, you know, of course it's kind of making sense but if you're foraging and not necessarily growing from seed, I think that attitude of like just a little bit, especially if you're experimenting with color. Handle is enough. Work with what's about it is the best way to describe it. Another thing is, well, we talked about this idea of kinship when asking for the gifts that plants are going to give us, being that their food, their shelter, their fiber, their color, you know? And one important thing, and that's why I always refer to what my organization is called, plants are teachers, but I always refer to art, ecology and community. Community is an important thing because humans on this planet also have relationships with plants and if we view a relationship with humans and plants, then the whole kind of equation works out. And again, experiment with all parts of the plants knowing that color changes considerably depending on the season. There's higher tenants later in the season, but earlier in the season. So that also would change your color extraction. And also, like sometimes you think plants might, certain plants might not care about color, but they won't give you surprises. Also, there are surprises with plants that probably they look purple, but the ultimate might be resulting in my turn green or my turn other color. So experimentation is fascinating with plants. Also, it's not written here that some plants are toxic, so that's kind of like the first thing that you should do your research. So it's actually written here like do your research. Right now we have access to so much information and it's so easy to just google the plant and see if it's toxic, is it not. Always try to kind of set up your kitchen in the outer so that you can kind of absorb all that. There's a lot of like poisonous things here same as like if you were working with commercial paint, like you would never eat a tube of acrylic paint, right? So it's kind of part of the norms to dedicate your equipment to dye or art making and never use it for food. And our goal for today is to make ink out of the part of the maquonia. It's from the Barbary's family. If you're aware of like the Barbary's plants, like in that family, they usually have a very pigmented inner part. One other thing that is important to consider is that this is living color, so don't get attached to color. And you look at it like next day and the color is like goodbye. Totally fugitive. But it's good to see it, you know, maybe photograph it once it's alive like that. And then, okay, you're okay with that. Let go, right? We're so used in our culture to synthetic colors, you know, that are so homogeneous and permanent. And it's hard for us to kind of go back to, you know, how nature talks, which is in a different language. When ink was discovered, paint was discovered first, right? Like when you see the hands with the red pigment on your face, you know, it's like that humans have to make paint. But ink is almost kind of a newer discovery, actually. And when ink was invented, it also was paired up with the language and the transmission of language in written like knowledge, right? And also ink became the medium to communicate the spiritual knowledge as well through scripture, right? There's a beautiful kind of connection of ink and the truthfulness of the gestural ink, right? As opposed to the paint. When you see paint, paint is more kind of a layer, it's more kind of, it has a different, it communicates the idea differently than ink. Ink has some certain sincerity and truthfulness to what it is. And that relationship to spirituality to me is really fascinating, right? So what he says is that he calls his experiments like tests because he wants to be free and let ink do what it does, right? So you're invited to let ink do what it does. No pressure to having to, you know, make anything particularly. Just let the ink and just be curious about what happens if you put a drop of iron or like if you put a little bit of this or that or nothing at all. Because I see there's some sediment from the mark, like super tiny pieces. So I'm going to actually filter with this paper filter again. Okay? Just so you know. And after that, I'm going to add the last remaining ingredient, the drops of club oil and all that. We're going to talk about something called a lake. I don't know if you've ever heard the term a lake, a lake pigment. Have you? Ever? Never ever? Have you started? Like a lake. Like L-A-K-E. Which is a term that actually, it's super fascinating the history of the term because it comes from originally from L-A-K, which is the name of an insect where L-A-K-E comes from. And this insect produced ink pigment back in India which actually is awarded, I think in Sanskrit, Sanskrit, sorry, that is pronounced like similar to L-A-K, you know? Then L-A-K-E lake, it comes from that origin. And what it is, is actually a chemical process that is ancient as well, which is fascinating that we're resurrecting all this chemistry and like this is how medieval people used to make paints, right? Out of botanical origin. Because lakes can only be created with organic matter. You cannot make a lake with a mineral pigment, which also is another source of color historically. Like there's a lot of mineral sourced pigments like from clays, from stones like Lapis lazuli, for example. It's a beautiful blue that was extremely expensive. Like if you read some of the books that we put out there for your bibliography, there's really this cool story about how the commissions for portraits and medieval times and renaissance, some artists wouldn't have the money to pay for the pigments and they would ask the actual commissioner to pay for the pigments and buy them themselves and they would be so apprehensive of the use of the color because it was so extremely expensive, like say a blue or a red, that they would say and this pigment is for the dress of so-and-so because that was also a symbol of status if they would use the color for a particular medieval painting of a portrait of someone, right? That was also kind of, if we talk about color in representational aspects of painting but if we talk about color in actual wearing the color also it was forbidden for certain classes, social classes to wear a particular color because it was only royalty, royalty, not only who could wear these colors but also who could pay for them, right? Because certain colors are extremely expensive even to this day, right? That is so fascinating the history of color and how when it was synthesized and accessible to the masses then the whole kind of status of color changed all of a sudden, right? And it was a red color that also originally came from the root of matter, the matter root this root I grew on the island this is the color of rubia tinctoria is the name of this beautiful plant that historically has such an importance because all the potent reds in history came from the rubia tinctoria which is this root if you read this fascinating because rubia tinctoria was the pigment known in the world for reds until they discovered at quote unquote the Americas and then cochinio which is the insect that we already spoke about became accessible and then that was a game changer because anyway there's a lot of historical kind of accounts like how color transformed history and then royalty would prefer the cochinio because it was more potent and there would have been kind of battles in the ocean for like pirates kind of trying to steal the cochinio coming from Mexico that's where it came from so it's really fascinating the history of these pigments but let's go back to the idea of a lake or lack or lake I would say lake is now how it's known a lake pigment so what it happens what happens is that instead of creating an ink which is in liquid form you can actually get rid of the water and make the color not hydro soluble and turn it into a water color by precipitating the organic matter and how that happens in the chemistry of it is that you have this liquid is suspended here the pigment is suspended in water right now this is long worked I double boil it so not direct heat but double boil it all of these pigments here I created this way with a double boiled system basically it's just a pot with amazing dark inside and let it simmer for an hour or two depending as you can see the color really extracting is when you can turn it off or textiles so I can actually put pieces of fabric that are pre-mordanted or not depending on if it's a protein fiber or a cellulose fiber dip it in the pigment or in the dye bath and take the color from it okay so we're using the metallic salt which is the alum the aluminum salt and we're using soda ash and it's usually one part of soda ash for two parts of alum the measurement you use in our case we're going to start with one gram if it's not enough double it to grams and you can see the precipitate to create it's honestly like a chemistry lab and you're seeing the color being from hydro soluble into a non-hydro soluble right it's fascinating and then you filter that and that's why I wanted to display all these filters which is kind of process what I'm showing you is how all these colors were filtered closer you can see oh there's golden rotten iron in the mix here and then I filter that and this powder is what we are going to grind with a medium which is our watercolor medium that you have the recipe of that has honey and glycerin and all these components we're going to use a glass muller which is an ancient instrument also to grind matter from mineral or organic origin to a micro particles to make it more suitable for painting so just so you know this was double boiled maybe for an hour and a half on the stovetop with a pot full of water the jar inside and all these jars where they're kind of boiling to extract the color that is right there so this is what I'm doing just taking as much as I can and look all the color is really in the water now okay and now this can also go here so now let's put this back in the jar we're going to add our alum right tell what's happening there not only turn green so it modifies the color of the purple cosmos but it's also do you see that it's actually kind of becoming precipitate okay so that's what's happening in there so I feel like we should probably add to precipitate and separate it more of the same measuring that we just did let's pour the alum first thank you so much do you see that bubbling kind of then let's add a little bit of this splash you see what's happening in there it completely separated so that separation that's the pigment right there and once you filter this which is what we're going to do next we're going to let it kind of separate even more and once we do that we're going to strain it here with one of these coffee filters use white just so you can see the color but you can use any coffee filter or any good filter that you have access to you can just use that and this is your dry pigment sometimes if it sticks whether it takes one day or two to dry up for you to be able to turn that into a watercolor pigment and that's what we're doing next but if it's cold it takes longer or if you put it next to the heating system it really accelerates the drying of your filters so now we have these beautiful separation we're going to leave it aside because we're going to do this in a moment but imagine fast forward in our cooking show you know when they pass the plate it happened overnight we filtered our precipitate and now we're going to turn it into a watercolor usable watercolor pigment so this is what we do come to your grinder which is here that you bought at the thrift store or an old grinder that someone gave you just kind of put it hot now and I love doing it here because it's really homogeneous but in ancient times you could do it on a mortar like that for a long time so you have some uniformity if you don't have access to electricity which chances are you're in the outdoors and you're doing this or something just use your mortar that could be a first step in the process it's actually pre grinding this and then putting it in the actual or pre what's the word for that and then passing it to your actual grinder but in this case for the purpose of time because I really want you to see this whole process we're going to grind it here and cover it and then just because this is the part when it's good to have a mask because there's some whole kind of storm happening inside your grinder sometimes I occupy myself with doing something else and that's starting to kind of if I open it right now look what's happening here do you see that? so all your pigment is kind of escaping so excuse me for that thank goodness we're outside I'm going to let that kind of settle so now that I ground my pigment here I usually pack them in these tiny bottles that are also very cute and I use a funnel for that so that's what you do with your pigment this is one step of the process that's if you want to collect your pigment and save it for later use but in this case we actually want to turn it into watercolor paint and for that I bought this piece of glass at a glass store I had some sandblasted glass that's how you ask for it because the sandblasting adds grind to your what you're going to do and these I bought online as a glass molar that's what it's called a glass molar they also have the ones that have a bigger handle that are so great to work with that they cost a little bit more so I only have like the cheaper version you could also use the weights for fermentation that look like this too and if they're completely flat they work what you do is you pour down a little bit of the pigment for these I'm not measuring I'm just eyeballing because it's more about how you feel the pigment is some people are super technical about measurements I'm not so forgive me for that if you're the type of person who's super technical you can do this in a very technical way so let's do it and let's just feel it the only thing that really has measuring is this substance and you have the recipe and there's other things that I really need to measure like the alum and the sodash you really need to measure that because if you change the ratio it affects your end result but these two things are the only two that follow the recipe the other things is more about experimentation and then this medium, the watercolor medium watercolor medium and there's a recipe so the recipe calls for honey winter green oil or clove oil a lot of gamarabic water and a little bit of glycerin vegetable glycerin that's my recipe for the medium that makes your pigment flow a little bit of that medium and put it in there for these I had a painting knife all the things that I need is the pure that I need them so what I'm going to do is I'm going to start mixing the pigment with the medium here what we're going to do now is grab the glass molar and this is the most satisfying thing to do and what you're going to do is you're going to start grinding the pigment like this to the minimal expression of particle grind it grind it grind it this I think feels to be the sound is pretty yeah it sounds like soft right so this is one you can tell okay this is ready to be packed so what we'll do is we're going to put a dot of these in this little card and let it dry and that's going to be your dot card anyway all these particles are not dissolved but you know that they can dissolve if you just make the effort to kind of dilute it here