Workshop: Colors of the New World

Please join us for a discussion on historic color and painting followed by a hands-on plant pigment workshop in our garden. Artist Sandy Rodriguez and Diana Magaloni of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will discuss the treatise on color and painting contained in the sixteenth-century Florentine Codex – the first illustrated encyclopedia of the New World. They will also speak on Rodriguez’s related investigations and creation of the Codex Rodriguez-Mondragón, a contemporary bioregional map and series of paintings about the intersections of history, color, medicine, and cultura. After the talk, Rodriguez will lead a two-hour demonstration and laboratory focused on methods for extracting organic colorants from edible and medicinal plants, insects, seeds, bark, and telluric materials (mineral and earth pigments) from Alta and Baja California. Participants will engage in a sensory experience with the artist as they test hand processed colors on a variety of materials and take-home postcards created on handmade paper produced from mulberry and wild fig bark in central Mexico. Tickets $20