The Colour of Ink: must-see documentary for artists and creatives of all sorts

My wife, Erika Lax, is an artist, but not the pretentious kind; she's all about the making of things, the exploration of colours, materials, processes, techniques - the doing of art, and not what the art itself says, either about "issues" (she doesn't do issue art, that I've seen) or about herself (she doesn't go around in a beret; it's not a pose; it doesn't license her to behave in some snobby, "I'm-an-artiste"-kind of way, buys her no license to be judgmental or vain or difficult, unlike, say, her "I'm-a-writer" husband, who can be a bit of a feckin' prick at times). She's very creative, very playful, but also quite humble about it - maybe a bit too much so, because I sometimes feel like I steamroller her, and that my passions (movies, music, etc) dominate in our lives a bit too much (I take up a fair bit of space). I always feel like if she's in a stretch where she's not making a lot of art, I'm partially at fault, which may, in fact, be the case... but she spent a good part of 2021 doing these rather amazing alcohol ink pours, on Yupo paper. I would bugger off for a day to go thrifting or to a matinee so she could work on them by daylight, listening to her own music in the apartment for a change. Everyone was really pleased with the results; they look every bit as exploratory and surprising and process-oriented as they in fact were. There are a bunch of them on her Instagram page, and she had a small show of them in a cafe on Vancouver Island a few months ago (and she still has some framed for sale, fyi). They're pretty amazing - and definitely involve ink!   

So the other night, Erika was on the phone with a friend, Laurie Yeo, who is also an artist - very much of the same unpretentious, fun, making-of orientation, though maybe a bit, ahh, louder about it than Erika is, which I mean in a good way: she a playful, smart, slightly flamboyant woman, funny and passionate and outspoken and maybe will fight for her space to make art a bit more devotedly than Erika - in other words, she's a really good influence, when they get together, though I think she'd find it a bit hilarious to hear herself described as such - yer a good influence, Laurie! She and Erika previously featured on this blog when we explored the Yoko Ono exhibition, back when we were all wearing COVID masks in public. She's a really fun person - I like all of Erika's friends but Laurie is way up there...

Laurie Yeo self-portrait: she sent this in an email entitled "Art art let a fart," which I don't think is the actual title of the piece, but...

Anyhow, during this call, she started to talk about this movie that Erika HAD to see: The Colour of Ink. She had watched it in a movie theatre on Vancouver Island, and, being a bit of a vocal type, was gasping and, I dunno, moaning in pleasure (?) - I wasn't there to hear her but she said that she heard herself "in the throes of satisfaction," reacting quite vocally to how stunning some of the images were ("I wonder what my neighbours thought," she quipped). She told Erika and I that it was one of the best documentaries she's seen ("playful, timeless, exciting, inspiring - and then the artists!"). Happily, it still has several screenings at the VIFF Centre (see the link under the title of the film, above). Turns out a screener was available, and Erika and I both agree with Laurie: the film is every bit as good as she'd said (I mean, we didn't have orgasms or anything, but we paused it a few times to blurt enthusiasm at each other before continuing). It's an inspiring, visually stunning, fascinating documentary about a subject I know nothing about and wouldn't actually have presumed would be all that interesting - but if you have ANY concern for art (including comics and tattoo art), my oh my, it is fun. 

The Colour of Ink is about an ink maker, Jason Logan, who passionately forages for materials that he can make inks from, exploring what colours he can get from these berries or that patch of rust or so forth. It's an entirely mysterious world for me; to my mind, ink is a chemical substance that is probably made in a lab somewhere, not something that someone is getting by crushing flowers in water and then adding some sort of gum to, to make it into something that holds together, that you can put on paper (or under skin) and make art with. I didn't even know (tho' no doubt Erika and Laurie both did) that lampblack ink is made literally by scraping the black off the inside of a lamp. I'm sure there are commercial ink-making processes being performed in labs and such out there, but this film is so profoundly nature-based, an exploration of colour in the world, that the art documentary it brought most vividly to my mind was the film about Andy Goldsworthy, Rivers and Tides...

...except that maybe The Colour of Ink is the better film, because much as I love Rivers and Tides, it's about one artist and his processes and explorations, while The Colour of Ink is about someone who, while as passionate and engaged with nature as Goldsworthy, is making a material that is then being used by other artists, who are also interviewed about their work and about ink and colour and so forth. Robert Crumb is included, though not interviewed - he's used Logan's inks; Liana Finck, on the other hand, does talk about his inks, and is seen using them, too. Margaret Atwood seemed a bit of a stretch to me - like she might have been looped in more because she was available and someone knew someone who knew her - but who knew she dabbled in calligraphy? (We get to see some of her doodles, too). There's also an ochre archivist, Heidi Gustafson of the Wild Pigment Project; a First Nations artist from Haida Gwaii, Corey Bulpitt, that Erika has actually interacted with as a result of her working for Opus; and a Japanese calligrapher, Koji Kakinuma, who compares Logan's inks to authentic Japanese sumi ink. But the coolest of the interview subjects is someone you haven't heard of, probably, though her work is stunning and a welcome surprise, if you've come to the film expecting it all to be about ink-on-paper: Roxx, a blackwork tattoo artist of 2Spirit Tattoo in Los Angeles. She's from London, but her work might make you think of Maori tattoo art - some of it is very tribal, and in fact she says in this GQ interview that she wanted to become "a tribal tattooer" (Maybe Chris Walter or Ani Kyd or some of my more inked-in Facebook friends know who she is?). There are lots of images of her work that are jaw-dropping, and I'm really not much of a tattoo guy at all. 

And everyone is calm and articulate, with their work lovingly photographed... the film truly is an inspiring and fascinating experience. I don't have much to say about it beyond the above, save that if you care about art or creativity (or ink!), you should see it. Erika thinks so, too! Now playing at the VIFF Centre.

Thanks, Laurie!