Spences Bridge

Today I drove 400 km around the Kamloops area visiting places like the Kamloop’s Viewpoint, Savona, Hat Creek, and Spences Bridge with Kelly, a local artist who shares my passion for finding and using local materials in her art. In each place we stopped we found soils and rocks that will make interesting colours … We found a rich sienna colour at the Viewpoint and flakes of something florescent in Savona (which was more exciting until we realized that it was chips for road paint!). In Hat Creek, a local farmer told me a tale of some dark red soil up the mountain that he could only break up with his tractor (I was unable to convince him to take us there though …).

But, the most exciting find today was at Spences Bridge, our last stop. While walking to explore an orange colour—which I thought I saw in the distance—I happened to see a thin yellow streak in a canyon and went to investigate. After removing a top layer of soil, I exposed a beautiful, bright yellow ochre vein of pigment which is the nicest I’ve ever seen. After filling a couple of bags (and one for Kelly too!) we turned  back to Kamloops feeling very satisfied with our trip.

During my stay in the Kamloops area for the Transart’s Collective’s Connecting-the-Dots exhibition, I’m taking the chance to explore the area for local-colours. For the exhibition I was connected with Kelly, which has turned out to be a good fit in a number of ways. Over the next couple of days we’ll be driving around the Kamloops area looking for regional pigment colours together.