Utah earth pigment and now home for a short spell

This is Utah Lake, near Provo.

Earth pigment from Utah: it's what we used on our latest broadside collaboration in Provo, Utah. With new friends and printer/papermakers Rob and Georgia Buchert, we drove up a canyon to a red hill near the ghost town of Thistle. We scooped up 4 different colors of dirt, from buff color to a deep, rich browny-red. The idea: use the pigment in the dirt for coloring a broadside we were to print at their "Tryst Press" studio. Rob and Georgia make very beautiful books and broadsides on their own handmade paper and Rob teaches a printing class at BYU. Their printing is precise and their work often features lovely relief-printed color illustrations. They also do job printing, like wedding announcements, and the one I saw looked perfect....

We used a quote by Jack Kerouac from "On the Road" for the text, and the illustration was of Utah clouds. Rob had made with his co-worker Paul some beautiful buff colored paper which turned out to be a beautiful color with the earth pigment. To make the pigment work, we first sifted the dirt with a set of miner's sieves. The resulting dirt was as fine as talcum powder. We printed the clouds in transparent rubber-based printer's ink, then dusted the clouds with the different colors of pigment. Oh so beautiful watching the clouds appear in the soft earth colors!

Here is the set of brass seives.

Me and Paul sifting the dirt.

Georgia, Paul and I 'painting' the dirt onto the wet ink.

Peter brushing the excess pigment off.

Now our first leg of the Adventures of the Wandering Book Artists has come to a close. We drove from Provo to home on Thursday and Friday. We crossed the beautiful Salt Lake valley, through the sagebrush and casinos of Nevada then our senses were bathed in the new green color of all the California foliage. Oak trees have newly leafed and the grasses are all chest high! We will be here about 3 weeks, to go to Strawberry Music Festival with my family, bind more books, leave behind all the unused stuff from the caravan and gather the stuff we forgot, then return to Salt Lake City to re-hitch Paloma and drive north to Idaho!

Utah clouds reflecting in the Salt Lake.