Notes from the Studio: Listening to Materials

Hello Reader,

Notes from the studio​
Lately, my decisions in the studio have less to do with what I should be making and more to do with what the materials are asking for.

I’ve been moving slowly, paying attention to color temperature, surface resistance, weight, and how long something needs to sit before it reveals itself. Papier-mâché. Paper pulp. Fiber. Batik. Indigo tones that refuse to be rushed. Texture that only shows up after a few mistakes.

This phase of the work feels less like production and more like listening. Less forcing. More guidance.

Color as Atmosphere

I’m choosing color the way you choose music for a long drive, not for drama, but for endurance.

Indigo. Soft earth tones. Muted blues. Moments of contrast that feel intentional rather than loud. I’m more interested in how color holds spirit than how it performs.

Some colors calm the surface.
Others agitate it.
Both matter.

Texture Tells the Truth

Paper pulp has a way of revealing impatience.

Early tests cracked, warped, and collapsed under their own ambition. Curious, but unsure.
The newer ones are quieter, thicker in places, thinner in others. More forgiving, because I stopped trying to control them.

The surface feels lived-in now. Like it knows something.

The same goes for fiber. I’m letting it interrupt the surface instead of decorating it. When it doesn’t behave, I pay attention. Materials are honest that way.

A Small Assist from AI​
(No robots in the studio, relax.)

One unexpected tool I’ve been using lately is AI, not to make the work, but to help me name the feeling of it.

I’ll describe a piece in progress and ask for language around color stories or possible titles. Not to choose blindly, but to see my instincts reflected back with new phrasing.

It’s less about answers and more about clarity, like talking something through with a studio assistant who never gets tired.

Where This Is Heading

​
This body of work is still forming. I’m not ready to define it yet, but I know this:

• I’m choosing materials that remember.
• I’m letting spirit lead.
• And I’m trusting that consistency will come from honesty, not force.

If you’re in your own testing phase, materials everywhere, answers nowhere, you’re in good company. Stay with it. The surface always tells you when it’s ready.

Indigo, Memory, and Thresholds

​
In Yorubaland, indigo isn’t just a color; it’s a threshold.

Blue marks depth, coolness, patience, and spiritual maturity. Indigo cloth carries àṣẹ (vital force) because it’s made through time, fermentation, repetition, and breath. Nothing rushed survives the vat.

• Yemoja, mother of waters, indigo mirrors her vastness. Oceanic. Ancestral. Holding grief and life at once. Indigo absorbs stories the way water does.
• Oya, guardian of change, wind, and the cemetery gates, indigo’s shift from green to blue echoes her liminality. Becoming. Unfixing. Transformation through exposure.
• Shango, thunder, heat, and justice, indigo holds tension between fire and water. The laboring body. The burn of fermentation. Power earned, not given.
• Oshun, sweet waters, beauty, creativity, indigo often frames her gold. Deep blue makes brilliance visible. Contrast as reverence.

Adire Yoruba indigo resist cloth is not decoration. It is encoded knowledge. Patterns act as proverbs, warnings, and lineage markers. Wearing indigo was, and still is, a way of entering spiritual alignment, not just expressing style.

What I'm Pondering

A Necessary Truth

By the 17th and 18th centuries, indigo, known as blue gold, reshaped global power as European empires raced to control its production across India, the Caribbean, and the American South.

That wealth was built on violence.

In colonies like South Carolina, enslaved Africans were forced to cultivate and process indigo under brutal conditions, while profits flowed to plantation owners and European markets. The industry depended on stolen expertise: many enslaved people carried sophisticated indigo knowledge from regions such as Nigeria and Mali, where indigo held spiritual, ceremonial, and social meaning long before colonization stripped it of context and turned it into a commodity.

I hold all of that when I work with blue, the beauty, the labor, the memory, the cost.

Thanks for sitting with me in the studio for a moment.

More soon,
Lisa

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