Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Reading 2
In her chapter from “The Anthropology of Turquoise” Ellen Meloy describes one of the “five fundamental, enthralling maps to the natural world”, being sight and our perception of color. She describes her experience living in Colorado’s plateaus, and being able to understand and interact with the setting through color. Meloy is very sensitive to the way her settings colors are changed by time, light, and the people that they house. She remembers as a kid her associations with different crayon colors; choosing to eat “gem colors over pastels”, not liking the “poop” color of raw umber but needing it to color the bottom of Daffy Ducks feet. She remembers the “vain pinks, hungry greens, and crayons as blue as devotion”.
I was most interested in Meloy’s idea that although we do know so much about how our eyes and brains perceive color academically, there is still a huge amount of mystery involved. There are more sensations that we experience from color than we are capable of articulating verbally. In our last round of critiques for project 1 the idea of empathy came up a lot, and I think that this is a good way to describe how people interact through color. We can empathetically have a similar experience internally even if an external experience of color is very different. As Meloy put it “We know color as a perceptual ‘truth’ that we imply and share without its direct experience, like feeling pain in a phantom limb or in another person’s body”.
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It is amazing to think about how much is still unknown about the way humans perceive color. We are instinctively drawn to certain things because of their color, it may resonate with us deeply, without requiring us to know exactly why. Meloy says that "...human sensitivity to color begins when we are infants..." and that "Intoxication with color, sometimes subliminal, often fierce, may express itself as a profound attachment to landscape." Together, these two thoughts especially interest me. As a child, I was brought up in an environment that contained a huge amount of colors that constantly changed and shifted with the seasons and the time of day. Now as an adult, when I see a certain color at a certain shade I am immediately brought to a time and place from my childhood, and likely a good memory.
ReplyDeleteThe orange found alongside pink and early blue sky in the summer is a different orange than the one created by the glow of a streetlamp at night with snow falling all around it in the middle of winter. These colors, though they may be very similar when placed next to each other and out of context, really are completely different in terms of how they resonate with me personally.
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ReplyDeleteI think it is interesting that you connected with the perception of color. I can see that playing a huge factor in your work in how you perceive toys. While reading the article, I kept thinking about my memory associations and feelings with colors and wondering how it would play through ceramics. It will be interesting to see how that idea builds upon your glaze work.
ReplyDeleteI think it is interesting that you connected with the perception of color. I can see that playing a huge factor in your work in how you perceive toys. While reading the article, I kept thinking about my memory associations and feelings with colors and wondering how it would play through ceramics. It will be interesting to see how that idea builds upon your glaze work.
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