Conk Shell
Some of the ‘Appropriate’ Gouache Containers from 1983
When I was in grad school, most of my time was consumed with required courses, thesis work, occasional grocery shopping at Star Market, laundry on Capitol Hill and urban riding adventures when I could. The undergraduate program was extensive, not only because of the variety and depth of the curriculum, but also because of the variety of students and professors. I was lucky to be around it. For all of those reasons, it was a great opportunity to take a class when I could fit it in. One that I did fit in was a winter session color class my first year. Winter session is a five week accelerated semester between fall and spring semesters.
Our very first assignment was to create the color wheel composed of primary and secondary colors. The next couple of assignments isolated specific colors, like compliments, and presented them as pairings to demonstrate various color relationships like simultaneous contrast. The next series explored value through black and white comparisons. For our final project, we picked an object to translate in color and in black and white. This assignment didn’t require painting on paper, then cutting the swatches out, assembling them and dry mounting them like all of the the others did, this assignment required us to paint directly onto the surface.
I picked a conk shell. My professor Aki asked me if I was sure I wanted to work with this object. She may have even raised an eyebrow. I assured her it would be fine. It was to pretty to pass up. I broke it down into approximately 22 colors for the color version and another 20 or so for the black and white version. If I hadn’t been impatient, it probably could have been used far more. Have you ever really looked at the inside of a conk shell like this one before? There are very few distinct color breaks. It’s just a smear of colors from one to another. I started by creating line drawings of the shell within a 10 x 10 square format in pencil and outlining general areas. Once I had the composition determined, I began to mix paint.
I used small aluminum pans about the size and depth of a hockey puck to hold the colors. They seemed perfect. After I finished mixing, I covered them in cellophane. I don’t remember exactly what happened immediately after that, why I left, or where I went, but I didn’t get back to the studio for a few days. When I returned, I peeled off the cellophane and discovered that most of them were dry, almost dry, and mostly unusable. I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown. I’d have to start completely over with the exception of just a few that survived. When I spoke with Aki to let her know what had happened and that I was way behind schedule now, she listened, nodded and simply let me know that a different type of container was probably a better way to go; like the ones above that she suggested from the beginning. So I bought them and started over. I remixed all of the colors and all of the gray values. The days flew by and I eventually just ran out of time. I didn’t finish either piece completely and she had to evaluate them on what I had. It was a disaster. Thirty-five years later I still have ‘school dreams’ about that class during periods of stress and self doubt, reliving the horror among my tediously prepared, dry, cracked gouache pucks.
Dedicated to Aki Nurosi
© C. Davidson