Are you ready for the world to become your palette? Join us at the Pigment + Place Workshop!

This workshop will introduce you to the vibrant world of natural pigments in your ecosystem. You’ll learn how to ethically forage pigments from the earth — rocks, flowers, roots, bark, bones — and how to transform these materials into any type of paint or ink. You’ll also learn about pigments as a way to creatively engage with ecological issues, including climate change. The Pigment + Place Workshop will include demonstrations, guided conversation, a guided foraging outing, and creative prompts. You’ll leave with a shared palette sourced from your bioregion and the skills to continue this practice on your own. This course is appropriate for all skill levels; no experience of any kind is necessary. Participants should be comfortable being outside and engaging in short nature walks. Your instructor is a certified wilderness guide so you can feel safe on our outings.

Join us in the Pigment + Place Workshop and learn to make vibrant natural pigments yourself!

Daniela Naomi Molnar is a poet, artist, and writer who creates with color, water, language, and place.

Her large-scale abstract paintings are created with pigments she has made from plants, bones, stones, rainwater, and glacial melt. Sourced from specific biomes she has visited, these paints become palettes of place with which she investigates site-specific relationships of place and time with a particular emphasis on the earth’s capacity to remember and recreate. Her poems and essays are created alongside the pigments and paintings; the two practices overlap and influence each other to create new ecologies — paintings, poems, books, exhibits, classes, and installations.

Molnar’s training in both science and art informs her painting and writing. She previously worked as an Art Director with Scientific American, she later founded and directed the Art + Ecology program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and she helped found and direct the backcountry artist residency, Signal Fire.

The subject of a front-page feature in the Los Angeles Times, a PBS Oregon Art Beat profile, an entry in the Oregon Encyclopedia, and a feature in Poetry Daily. Her artwork has been shown nationally, is in public and private collections internationally, and has been recognized by numerous grants, fellowships, and residencies.

Her debut book CHORUS won the 2024 Stafford/Hall Oregon Book Award for Poetry and was selected by Kazim Ali as the winner of Omnidawn Press’ 1st/2nd Book Award. Her book-length poem “Memory of a Larger Mind” accompanies photographs by Julian Stettler in The Glacier is a Being (Sturm & Drang, 2023). Her work is anthologized in the forthcoming second volume of The Ecopoetry Anthology and in Breaking the Glass: A Contemporary Jewish Poetry Anthology by The Laurel Review. Her upcoming books include PROTOCOLS (Ayin Press, 2025) and Light / Remains (Bored Wolves Press, 2026). 

The Pigment + Place Workshop is only available on Saturday, September 7, 2024, from 10 AM — 4 PM.

Molnar’s work is featured in the Main Gallery’s exhibition Transformation / Reclamation at The Arts Center, September 6 – October 26, 2024.