Tilke Elkins: Records of Being Held

“Pigments are living collaborators. I paint on wild surfaces, with mineral and botanical pigments originating in the sites where I work,” writes Tilke Elkins. While the Oregon-based artist’s solo exhibition exists in a gallery space, it’s a visual and tactile conduit to the places where she hand-gathers materials and creates artwork.

In an unconventional approach to the dynamic between an artist and her collectors, the pigments of each work in Records of Being Held will eventually be re-collected by the artist and other members of the pigment community, and ritually returned to the sites where they were gathered. Individuals interested in participating in this painted performance can engage the materials by offering financial support for communities in ancestral relationship with the land where the pigments were found. A portion of sales proceeds will benefit the Kommema Cultural Protection Association, an organization led by Kalapuya elder Esther Stutzman, currently rematriating an area of ancestral Kalapuya lands in the region where these pigments were gathered, and the Wild Pigment Project Equitable Opportunity Fund.