“It is good to feel lost…because it proves you have a navigational sense of where ‘Home’ is. You know that a place that feels like being found exists. And maybe your current location isn’t that place but, Hallelujah, that unsettled, uneasy feeling of lost-ness just brought you closer to it.” Erika Harris
Reflections, Photographs, and Studies on Color
by Nicolette Hayes
1.10.12 What a peculiar sensation it is, waking up in a new bed. After sleeping so soundly the mind feels fresh and empty and in that moment before you open your eyes you are everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. But once you open your eyes you have the sensation of falling–spinning even. You are certainly not everywhere. You’re not even nowhere. You find yourself inescapably somewhere and you’re not sure how you feel about that. So here I am in this new place. New windows, new sounds, new smells. All conspiring to leave me lonely and adrift, inconsequential and irrelevant... Enough of that. This world is as much mine today as it will ever be. Time to tackle the abyss, make some sense out of it. But first: coffee.
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1.17.12 I’ve met three people. I’ve been to some bars, a few museums and even a job interview. All of which were pretty alright. Still not exactly sure how I fit into all of this, but I’m okay with that for now. But I haven’t forgotten my mission to make something out of nothing (or out of something, as it may be). I’m reading this book about a great city at the turn of the century. Right smack in the middle was this little bar–dingy and vibrant, a microcosm for a hundred lives. Kind of like a town mascot. Is it too presumptuous to create a mascot of my own? Has this city become so great and unfathomable that it defies simple symbolism? No matter. I need a mascot.
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And I nominate...rust. Does that sound crazy? It sounds crazy. I don’t mean rust in the crusty, ruined way that you’re picturing. In my mind it’s a noble rust–one that represents time and dignity. Majesty and grace. A gorgeous, weathered hue of experience and exposure to the elements. A mascot that has seen it all and been allowed to change with time. You’ve seen this color before. In the Crayola box I think they called it Brick Red. In my artist’s Color-Aid set they call it Redorange Shade 1. It’s the color of my favorite shoes in college. The color of the comforter on my bed for the last five years. The color of my Grandma’s old Honda–the one with the automatic seatbelts and the actual rust on the hood. Yes, I realize these are all things from a past life. But they must be here too–in this city of gray pavement and silver skyscrapers I will find rust in all its rich and hidden forms.
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1.18.12 I bought some very pretty paint from a funny old man. The shop was cramped and he’d painted hundreds of lumpy, meticulous swatches on the wall--but the pigments were fantastic. I took them home and mixed them up. It turns out, all it takes is equal parts of red and yellow pigment to make red-orange. Then I can add a touch (just a touch!) of gray to transform it into my rich and loving friend rust.
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1.20.12 It’s amazing how much this color can do! After I got tired of respectfully applying paint to paper, I let an irreverent child creep into my soul and drag the brush through tea leaves, pools of water and bits of crumpled up paper. I went out and ran my hands over other people’s cars, high school tracks, peeling stickered newspaper vending machines and crumbly old bricks. This color is everywhere! From the stop sign on the corner to the crumbling facades of the houses lining my street. And to think it is essentially just a certain length ray bounding off a surface. There are SO many possible surfaces!
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1.22.12 Today it snowed. I know it’s January, I know this is the northern hemisphere, but the sky was so gray and it felt like the sun was shunning us. I couldn’t see any point in going out so I stayed in and painted my nails.
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2.4.12 Yesterday I went shopping, which felt good. There’s something so wonderfully defiant about dressing in bold colors. I even bought myself a pair of lovely scarlet flats so that when I take a step against the gray asphalt I’ll have a flash of color to make me smile. And then I found a gorgeous burgundy shawl and it promised to keep me warm so I invited it home with me as well. It seems that I can find joy in just about any shade, tint or tone of this lively color.
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2.11.12 I’m embarking on a culinary adventure. Cooking is always something I’ve done out of a mixture of boredom and creative restlessness. The few times I’ve cooked because of actual hunger I find myself so disappointed by the brief and destructive act of eating (always alone, mind you) that it seems pointless in comparison to the how well-fed I was by the act of creating. For me, cooking is cool and creative, eating is warn and social. And it’s best when I can mix the two.
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2.14.12 I met an architect who loves to draw. In fact, he loves to annotate gray building photos with a red-orange pen. It makes for a startling splash–that cold steel and hard, bright lines. We wandered through some shops for the afternoon and he bought me a pen–the same one I’ve been drawing with all morning. I used to live with an artist who always used that very same pen. He loved it so much he would never let me use it. So the gesture was somewhat startling. Does this pen mean I’m good enough?
Image courtesy of Jon Schramm
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2.20.12 Simple tasks define my days. Sometimes I will take the subway to a neighborhood and spend hours just walking around. Some days I will visit a wine shop and drink a bottle of rosÊ in the sun. Some days I feel justified sitting in contemplation because that night I know I will be drinking whiskey with the architect. Apparently this amounts to a life: walking, wine and whiskey. On these days I feel as content as I’ve ever been. There’s a special comfort to be found in red-orange in its liquid state. Gin and juice are reminiscent of wild and transient times. Beer and bourbon put out a warm hand and pull you to the heart. I can think of worse things.
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2.22.12 My thinking on rust has been too narrow. If the dazzle of light in my wine glass is red-orange, who is to say I shouldn’t include the rich and embracing tones of mahogany and cherry. The grain of the table under my coffee cup this morning was startling. It made me want to run my hands over it and feel its warmth. So much personality and comfort in one useful surface. The architect doesn’t just draw--he makes things. Beautiful wooden things usually. When he saw my silly, cramped bedroom he made me something wonderful: a birchwood bedside table with steel legs. The hint of warm red breathes life into my tiny space and makes it feel more mine than the things I’ve owned for years.
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3.6.12 I’m in love. I never could have anticipated how much I love this color. In highschool I remember a typically cruel and undermining good friend of mine commenting how based on my wardrobe my favorite color was obviously brown. Brown! I was indignant. No one loves brown. I love brown. Or, as I’ve affectionately learned to call it: red-orange neutrals. When you add a splash of this color’s complement you open up a rich world of neutral tones that lends depth and warmth to what my derisive friend dismissed as brown. Now imagine my pleasure when I saw how beautiful it becomes paired with ANOTHER color. Red-orange doesn’t have to be alone! Its beauty is only enhanced when placed next to bluegreen–its opposite in the color spectrum. Opposites don’t just attract–they create beauty in an otherwise nondescript space.
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3.16.12 I’ve become something close to complacent in this city of mine. Maybe it’s a natural evolution: the more you see, the more you recognize. The more you recognize the more familiar it feels. The more familiar, the more open you are to seeing more. Because these days I see quite a lot. The architect is taking me to see the city where he grew up. I anticipate more brick, more long rows of brownstones, rich with dignified history, self-reflexive, self-contained. Cleverly unifying the diversity of lives behind their facades. I imagine diversity, but for all their differences there is something beautiful in their cohesive similarity.
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3.28.12 I suppose it’s time for me to make something again. I used to work in a ceramics studio where I would mix glazes like a mad scientist. One part cobalt to two parts iron oxide. One pile of shimmery black powder and a pinch of feathery silver dust. Apply heat and whoosh! A bright blue bowl with a yellow rim on a terracotta base. I was working magic for the potters at my studio--the man behind the curtain, so to speak. I got so invested in the process that I would go weeks without throwing a single pot of my own. But right now I could use some clay under my nails. A deep red-orange stain on my wrists no matter how long and hard I scrub them. Some natural grit to counteract the city’s artificial grime.
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3.29.12 I’ve had some good windows over the years. In Oakland I could watch the sun set over a wooded valley. In San Francisco puffy clouds would collect behind the delicate radio tower on Twin Peaks. In Tasmania the bay would reflect glassy and placid at dawn before it was flooded with hundreds of tiny sailboats. Nothing makes me love a view quite like the elongated rays of the rising or setting sun. 34
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4.12.12 Is it ridiculous that my “nesting” urges literally result in me bringing foliage into my home? Nothing makes a space feel more alive than living things. A splash of green, a pop of blue, a lovely rich brown table–I’m home. I bought a plant for my bathroom because it’s a dull and lifeless place. The poor little thing is battling fiercely but the lack of light is taking its toll. I need it to survive, even if it means giving it a better home. But it makes me sad to think that this house I’ve put so much energy into might not be that place.
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4.22.12 Lately I’ve been enamoured with the streets I walk on every day. Just because I don’t live in a pastel, color-coordinated, neighborhood association-regulated suburbia doesn’t mean that the houses are any less united in the colorful face they present. Curious about my studies, people sometimes ask me what colors look best together, and I’ve realized that there is no answer to that. Even the most haphazard-seeming schemes have an underlying order and harmony. The accidental complements are usually the most beautiful.
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I started flipping through my photo album to look at other streets I’ve lived on. In Switzerland they work hard to make each structure something beautiful. But I wonder if they realized how lovely the sky would look against the red, peaked roofs. And in Hobart, did they choose the rust-colored brick to enhance the blue-green of the sea?
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4.30.12 They say home is where the heart is. And according to Buckaroo Banzai: wherever you go, there you are. Red-orange is the color of love--the brighter and brassier the better if you ask Hallmark. And what better motif for the home than a heart? Today I was doodling, or trying to doodle, and all I could draw was hearts. Quirky, lopsided hearts. Graceful, sleek hearts. Ample, curvy hearts. The margin of my book looked like it belonged to a lovesick seventh-grader. But then I started overlapping them. Patterns emerged only vaguely representative of my original juvenile scribble. At its essence I could still feel the love, but working as a whole I had fashioned something more complex and surprising. I realized when I was done that I felt like my exploration of rust had also ended. My color had come full circle from something I observed in a world thrust upon me, to a tool I could use to create a world of my own.
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6.1.12 I’m moving again. I’m getting an apartment with the architect (have I mentioned I love him?), which is a little scary--possibly even reckless. But it’s less scary when i consider how far I’ve come in the past few months. Does it matter now which house I live in when all I need to feel at home is what I already carry with me? Wherever we end up I’ll admire the diffuse light in my whiskey glass, the warm curve of the arm of my wooden chair, the cozy warmth of my burgundy shawl, the concentrated brow of my architect while he sketches with his red pen. And I’ll be home.
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Index of Investigations Monochromatic Color Scheme Properties of Red-Orange Texture Studies Achromatic Grayscale Value Chart Red-Orange Shades, Tones & Tints Warm & Cool Studies Transparency Studies Red-Orange Neutrals Complementary Color Harmony Color Proportion Study Split Complementary Color Harmony Tertiary Triad Color Harmony Analagous Color Harmony Patterns
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