What are pigments, how are they made, and how do they work? How did the development of pigment technology limit the choices made by artists in specific cultures? How did raw materials cross the globe, and what significance did rare colors carry? What sub-narratives of premodern art have we lost now that pigment manufacturing has migrated from alchemy to science? This course focuses on artist’s pigments through the theoretical, historical, and methodologic lens. Forgotten narratives related to the alchemical, magical, and spiritual qualities of historic pigments will be covered on a global scale. This course also features hands-on, collaborative pigment making from raw sources such as earths, minerals, plants, and insects. Like all Making + Meaning courses, Artist’s Pigments is a hybrid studio and seminar, and class time will be split between discussion, topical lectures, and practical pigment making and usage. Students will be reading texts that address color manufacture and use specific to time and place, the development of pigment technologies, and the effect that those technologies had on aesthetics. This class also includes trip to a paintings conservation lab to discuss how conservators bridge the gap between historic process and modern science. Making+Meaning: MATERIALS approaches materials as creative technique and as concept. It combines practice in (virtual and concrete) studios with theoretical instruction, as an inclusive method of applied reflection. Texts, like objects, are elements that can be freely deconstructed or fused, without following a canon or prescribed context. The student’s creative originality in developing and reflecting on such approaches and processes is tested out in the course. Students are encouraged to integrate the knowledge they acquire from their studio and seminar experiences in this Making + Meaning course.