COLOR

November 13th, 2006

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Oh my, it’s been a very long time since I wrote anything here. I tell my clients that they shouldn’t start a blog or pod cast unless they are sure they can devote the time to it and its obvious I speak from experience.
Since my last entry we went to Grand Manan, have had several trips to VA to help my mom move and school has started—not only started but is in the home stretch for this semester.

I can talk about all those things another time but right now I wanted to talk about color. I thought it might be a good idea to talk about color here as it is a little like a garden. To understand and create with both color and plants it helps to know something about their physical qualities and to be able to use the correct terminology but the enjoying is in the marveling.

Recently my friend and colleague, Prof. Jane Likens, and I were asked to give a talk on color to the Heartstring Quilters in Wynnewood, PA, a guild of very interesting women (I think they are all women as I didn’t see any men but they may have some male members). Jane’s background is in fashion, she is an instructor at Philadelphia University in the Fashion Design Dept while I teach in the Graphic/Digital Design Depts. We’ve been friends for years, having met our freshmen year at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia and have marveled at many things.

I’ve given talks on color before – I taught color theory for a number of years, but I’d never done so in tandem. We had a great time hauling out all our color information; books, samples, student work, slides and power point presentations, etc we’ve accumulated along the way. The trick was to narrow it down to a less than one hour talk in a room where we weren’t sure of the size, equipment or even the light source. (The light source does effect color perception.—Since it would be held in a hospital meeting room at night we figured on fluorescence lights.) We had no idea of the level of knowledge of the audience but figured it was a wide range from novice to professional—we also figured that anyone who liked any fiber arts would enjoy anything on color whatever the level. We decided to just have fun. I would do the intro, giving the physical and communication side of the talk and Jane would follow up with her wonderful fabric samples.

So—this has me thinking about color a lot and I thought I’d make a new category for color and start some color blogging. My first entry—after this, I will talk about our color talk. Right now I going home for supper on a very rainy night.
Bye—