Tickets are sold out, but there will almost definitely be no-show spots up for grabs. So come anyway 😉
I’m very excited to be hosting a clay paint making workshop at the Foundry Festival in Cambridge next month! It’ll be 5-7 PM in the Jewelry Workshop of the Cambridge Foundry.
We’ll be using Cambridge-harvested clay, wheat paste, and earth pigments to blend up natural clay paints that are suitable for indoor uses. Participants will get to experience every step of the process, from screening soil to making wheat paste to applying the paint. At the end of the workshop, you’ll get to take home a small sample of your own DIY paint.
Why clay paint?
Paint is notorious throughout history for being toxic. For its pigments, lead, cadmium, arsenic, radium, mercury, and uranium have been used. For its solvents, formaldehyde, toluene, xylene, and benzene have been gifted by modern chemistry. One study on the health effects of organic chemicals in paints estimated that every time a home is repainted, each resident loses between 3.6 hours and 3.5 days of their life.1
The pigments, solvents, and fillers are bound together by tiny plastic molecules, usually acrylic and polyvinyl alcohol, which contribute a whopping 58% of the microplastics in the world’s oceans and waterways.2
This all paints an ugly picture that should make anyone think twice about coating the walls of their home with it!
Clay paint is one far healthier alternative. In a simple recipe, clay provides sticking power and opacity, earth pigments add color, and wheat paste helps bind it all together. Unlike synthetic paints, which seriously pollute the environment when they are disposed or degraded, clay paint simply turns back into dirt.
In this workshop, I’ll present clay paints as not just a single drop-in substitution for a toxic product, but part of an entire alternative way of building and living: natural building.
This workshop is free thanks to the Foundry Consortium and its supporters. Space is limited, so please register in advance (and commit to coming if you do!)
The Cambridge Foundry is a community maker space and arts venue, and every year they throw a festival to engage people in a diversity of activities around a central theme. This year’s theme is “resilience.” I’m very excited to be partnering with them again, and there’s a chance you might spot some of my work at the ending showcase.
- This is their figure for water-based paint, which is slightly lower than for solvent-based paint. I converted this from 4.1 × 10-4 to 9.5 × 10-3 DALYs (Disability Adjusted Life-Years). My rephrasing is a slight simplification. Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389423024299 ↩︎
- Much of that 58% is from “architectural” sources, so yes, painting buildings. ↩︎
biolithic builds 
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