This guide will outline the application and effects of a molding paste ground intended for use with oil or acrylic paint, which creates an extremely smooth, thick, and non-absorbent surface.

Ground is the layer in a painting between the supports (canvas, wood, or paper) and the paint. It can be prepared to have different characteristics—smooth or textured, thin or thick, absorbent or non-absorbent, white or colored—depending on what kind of effects you want to achieve.

This guide will outline the application and effects of a molding paste ground, which creates a surface similar to mylar or another polypropylene material. A molding paste ground is extremely smooth and relatively non-absorbent; without much “tooth,” paint glides across the surface very easily. This makes it easy to create very thin layers or washes of color when the paint is mixed with enough medium or extender—oils and acrylics can take on some of the visual effects of watercolor. It also makes working with translucencies and overlapping layers of color rewarding. Lastly, the way paint sits on top of the ground makes it easy to create texture with the brush. Especially with oils that remain workable for hours, as paint is pushed across the surface, evidence of the thickness or length of the bristols is visible.

*A note of clarification on size (sealant) vs. ground: Painting material terms can often be confusing, and they are sometimes used interchangeably or inconsistently by manufacturers. A size is a glue used to seal the canvas or wood panel before doing any ground preparation. Sizing a surface protects the support, ensuring that the paint or even the ground doesn’t seep into the fibers of the canvas or wood, helping to preserve the painting over time. While the molding paste ground is generally applied thick enough to effectively seal the support, I would still recommend applying a pH neutral PVA (polyvinyl acetate) size to create the most archival surface.

The molding paste we’re using for this project is a water-based product made by GOLDEN that has a thick consistency and forms a flexible, semi-opaque film when it dries. It is often mixed directly with acrylic paints for textured impasto techniques. However, when applied in layers directly to a support and wet-sanded, it creates a uniquely smooth, glass-like ground that allows oils and acrylics to glide like watercolor. The ground we are preparing is intended for use with oil or acrylic paint.

Required Materials/Tools:

• GOLDEN Molding Paste

• large palette knife

• small palette knife

• wet/dry sandpaper (150–320 grit)

• spray bottle

• stretched canvas or wood panel

• paper towel

• PVA size

• wide brush

Optional:

• white gesso

• sealable mixing container

• sanding block

• masking tape

Step 1: Choosing a Support

Since this ground is thick and requires the buildup of multiple layers of molding paste, it works best on a more structural support—wood panel or canvas work better than paper. Additionally, having a flat and rigid surface, while not necessary, makes the application process easier. For example, canvas stretched over the panel will be easier to work with than canvas stretched on a strainer. Having something to push against is helpful for achieving the unique flatness and smoothness that is possible with this material.

Step 2: Tinting the Ground (Optional)

Once you have your support ready, you can decide if you would like to tint your molding paste ground. If you want your ground to be white, mix equal parts white acrylic gesso with molding paste in a large sealable container. This step is optional, as molding paste on its own has a light-grey semi-translucent color that looks almost like frosted glass. This color can be nice for creating muted tones, while a white ground makes translucent oils look more luminous.

Step 3: Application

Using the large palette knife, loosely spread molding paste onto the canvas/panel so there is enough to cover the surface. (It’s better to put too much than too little, as the extra will be scraped off in the spreading process and can be reused). Use one hand to hold the handle of the large palette knife and place the four fingers of your other hand on top of the blade.

Then, starting in one of the top corners, after cleaning the knife, push down and drag the blade to the bottom of the canvas/panel. The idea is not to scrape but to flatten and push the paste so it spreads across the surface as flat as possible. You will want to keep the blade level, with only the slightest angling up of the edge closest to you. After the first stroke, move left or right across the support, slightly overlapping your previous stroke, until the entire surface has been covered.

I find that I can achieve the best coverage if I do this once, then flip the support 180 degrees and do the same things all along the opposite edge. If there are big ridges left between the strokes, then push with less pressure.

Molding paste dries relatively quickly, so it’s important to start immediately after applying the paste to the surface. You will be able to go over your strokes if you’re not satisfied on the first pass, but after a couple attempts it gets tacky and won’t spread smoothly. It is okay if there are ridges or gaps left at the end of your first layer—these can be sanded away or filled later.

Depending on the thickness, it takes about 4–8 hours for a layer to dry before the next one can be applied. (Note: if the surface feels dry to the touch but is still cold, then the paste hasn’t dried all the way through.) Apply at least three layers or until the weave of the canvas is no longer visible. Any holes or divots that are left in the surface can be easily filled using a small palette knife once the last layer has dried completely.

A note about the edges: after multiple layers, you will notice that the ground builds up and hangs over the edge of the surface creating a sculptural border around the side of the support.

This is one of my personal favorite characteristics of the molding paste ground; however, if you find it distracting, it can be removed with an X-acto blade by trimming it perpendicular to the surface.

Step 4: Wet Sanding

In this last step we will take advantage of the molding paste’s ability to be finished with an extremely smooth surface. Wet sanding is great for finishing in general—it prevents clogging in the sandpaper and reduces inhalation hazards by trapping dust in the water—but it works particularly well with this water-based material.

First, using the spray bottle, coat the surface with a thin layer of water. This will reactivate the ground. Starting with your 320 grit sandpaper, wrap it around a sanding block (or other flat object like a 2x4 cutoff) and begin working the surface with circular motions. The water will mix with the sanded molding paste creating a white slurry that helps the sanding block glide along the surface.

All the small particles that would otherwise be dispersed into the air are instead trapped in the slurry and pushed across the surface, filling in the small holes left from the application process. Wait for the surface to dry and then repeat this process with a lower grit sandpaper until you have achieved your desired level of smoothness.

Now the molding paste ground is complete, and you can begin the process of painting.

James Warren (b. 1999) lives and works in New York. He received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2022 and has exhibited in New York, Brooklyn, and Providence, RI. In 2025, he was a participant in the Land Arts of the American West program at Texas Tech University, researching and making in the American Southwest. Working primarily with painting, drawing, and photography, his work is concerned with dialectical landscapes—where natural forces and human intervention intersect. He is interested in the possibility of image-making as something which can not only depict the built environment, but also influence, construct, and become a part of it.

Q: Dear Jerry,

How do I get out of my head, stop reading books, and actually do shit?

Signed,

All Gas, No Go

Dear AGNG,

First off—this is the first time in recorded history someone’s asking how to stop reading books. Usually I’m out here begging people to crack one open that isn’t a take out menu or the back of a motor oil bottle. But listen, if you’re gonna stop reading books, at least give yourself the treat of reading Art Forearm once a week so you don’t get the literary withdrawals.

Here’s what I think: you don’t have a reading problem. You got a parking brake problem. Reading’s a beautiful thing. It keeps the engine running nice and smooth. But if you never drop it into drive, you’re just burning fuel out here. Sure, things sound productive, they probably smell productive, too. But you ain’t going nowhere.

You’re asking me why you’re idling. Because moving means you might stall, man. But let me tell you something…everything stalls. Everything breaks or fails eventually. I’m not being pessimistic, I’m just reading you the warranty.

I’ve seen cars come in looking like the quarter pound patty in an I-95-pile-up-burger. And my guy Alonzo—absolute magician, we call him the Dent & Ding Master—he’ll tap, pull, drop a few f-bombs, step back, try again. But he gets it back to beautiful every time, and you’d never guess it was a salvage title.

You know what Alonzo doesn’t do? Sit there reading manuals all day. My guy gets in and gets his hands dirty. And yeah, sometimes he makes it a lot worse before it gets better. That’s process, that’s practice.

Here’s what nobody likes: practice and failure are a package deal. You don’t get one without the other. Like grinding gears learning to drive a manual transmission. For anyone who remembers those.

Lot a people walking around like failure’s optional. Give it time. Your knees are gonna go just like your neighbor’s catalytic converter did, and you’re gonna be buying the cheaters next to the candy bars like the rest of us. System failure is undefeated.

You can do one of two things, my friend. You can be afraid of failing and bury your nose in a book or you can get interested in it. Only one of those things gets things built right.

You want actionable steps? Good news! It’s not really as mysterious as you’re making it out to be.

Step 1: Put the book down.

Not forever, just for now. You’re not reading for knowledge anymore, you’re reading for permission. And I’ll tell you right now—permission’s a lousy boss. If there’s anything I’ve learned working with codes departments, it’s that you’re always better off doing your own thing and hoping for forgiveness later.

Step 2: Do nothing.

Yeah, you read that right. Sit there. Stare at a wall or a ceiling fan or a sunset or the back bar at a place where no one asks you what you do. Let your thoughts rev a little. Let them get loud enough to bother you. I call this the pause.

You know how many hours I’ve spent staring at an Iron Duke before picking up a wrench? Embarrassing amount. But if you skip that part, you’ll end up taking the engine apart twice. Thinking isn’t in the way of doing, it’s the compressed airline to your impact wrench.

Step 3: Pay attention to the most annoying questions.

You’re not waiting for a good idea, you need to listen for the most persistent one. Don’t worry, it’ll come up once you stop drowning it out with other people’s words.

Step 4: Make something that’s not good.

You don’t drive your car onto jack stands, you have to jack the car first and then get the stands underneath it. So lower the bar on your expectations, and you can jack them up as you go.

There’s a secret ain’t nobody writing books about: you can’t make good shit without making bad shit first. It’s physically, spiritually, and mechanically impossible. So get in there! Make a mess. Strip a bolt. Then start over.

And when you get stuck again—and don’t worry, you will—pick the book back up if you want. Just don’t confuse reading a map with driving on the highway.

Now go do some shit!

–Jerry

Here’s the short version:

Trust yourself enough to learn from your own failures instead of outsourcing the experience.

Do you have a question for Jerry? Ask him for his advice on art materials, fabrication techniques, professional etiquette, lover’s quarrels, vintage cars, applying to grad school, sandwich-making, international travel, or any other areas of life where you could use some advice or good news.

Inspired in part by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jen de los Reyes writes on forgoing a traditional studio space in order to commit resources to the three zones that hold her practice: community organizing, place-based work, and the kitchen.

It feels appropriate for me to set up my Studio Profile with an exchange between two artists who have had deep and lasting impacts on my work as an artist and educator—Tim Rollins and Felix Gonzalez-Torres:

TR: This is something that I’ve always wanted to ask you: why have you deliberately, obstinately decided for some reason not to have a studio?

FGT: Do you really want to ask me that?

TR: Yeah, because it’s very curious to me. It’s almost like making art on the dining-room table as a hobby. This is an amazing limitation. You don’t have the trappings of a studio: assistants, visitors, and all that. Issues of space and light are gone since your work is so sensitive to place and context. How do you determine the pieces? You say you don’t do drawings but I know you must do drawings, you must have some idea of what the piece is going to look like, so how do you begin?

FGT: I really don’t plan pieces using drawings. First of all, I usually dislike drawings by sculptors, they’re just so academic and expected. I don’t follow that prescribed mode. I do make drawings and photographs but they have their own specific function. They are not sketches of the sculptures, these are drawings that represent a parallel set of ideas. The reason why I don’t have a studio... I think that I’m very neurotic. Actually I guess I am neurotic. So having a studio would paralyze me completely. Just the idea that I would have a place where I had to go to work and make “something” scares the shit out of me. The studio is a scary stage set.

While I don’t see the studio as a “scary stage set,” like Torres I can and in some ways do identify as a kitchen table artist. I have only kept an official designated studio at three points in my career, and always because they have been institutionally provided to me and not something I sought out for myself. When I have received this kind of institutional support, I have often used the studio space in unorthodox ways that provide other forms of support for my practice—space for community meetings, or an extended classroom. One of the reasons I wouldn’t seek out a dedicated studio on my own is that the kind of work I engage in doesn’t necessitate it; it would also be an economic burden to carry, and those financial resources could be better allocated.

Triangulating the zones that make up my “studio” would encompass the following aspects of my practice: organizing and administration, land-based approaches, and the kitchen (not just the table!). I have done, and continue to do, a lot of work that involves communicating with many other artists. Open Engagement, one of the most notable aspects of my practice, entailed communicating with hundreds of artists over the course of years. For a more recent project I am working on with The National Audubon Society, I invited 389 contemporary artists to each interpret a bird on the list of their groundbreaking climate report “Survival by Degrees: 389 Bird Species on the Brink.” All of this means a lot of time sitting and doing admin.

The next zone of my studio is place-based work, most recently LAND. LAND is a site of research, cultivation, care, and conservation that I established with artist Oscar Rene Cornejo. The project combines histories of artists’ engagement with land-based practices and techniques with environmental regeneration and conservation to cultivate sustainable futures. Currently this means spending a lot of time outdoors working on plantings and conservation on site. LAND is also an extension of my classroom.

And now we get to the kitchen. By this I don’t mean that food is an aspect of my practice, though I do love cooking and if I were to make a career change, this would be the path for me. My current studio provided to me through my teaching appointment is equipped mostly with basic kitchen supplies—pots, hot plates, funnels, strainers, coffee filters, all of which I have been using to make inks and dyes from natural materials.

For a recent collaboration with Oscar for the earth dwell/ers school in Los Angeles, I wrote a birding field guide for the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve, and he made an artwork depicting the bushtit. The painting was created using natural inks and pigments I ethically foraged and processed. Many of same materials that are part of the ecosystems that support these birds also provided the materials to create these inks:

• Green ink was made from buckthorn berries.

• Browns are black walnut ink.

• Black was created from charcoal ash from fallen branches.

• Vibrant pink is from pokeberry.

• Grays are from wild cherry ink.

Jen de los Reyes is an artist, educator, writer, and community arts organizer. With roots in the Riot Grrrl and DIY music scene, her practice incorporates pedagogical, ecological, and organizational methodologies. She founded and directed Open Engagement, an international conference on socially engaged art that was active from 2007–19. She worked within Portland State University from 2008–14 to establish the Art and Social Practice MFA program with a curriculum focused on place, engagement, and dialogue. Following that, Reyes was the Associate Director of the School of Art & Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she taught in the departments of Art and Museum and Exhibition Studies.

Her collaborative work and practice have been situated at institutions including the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Queens Museum, the Oakland Museum of California, MCA Chicago, and the Portland Museum of Art.

She speaks widely and has presented at the Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum, UCSB, UMass, NYU, Textile Museum of Canada, Museum of Contemporary Craft, Concordia University, Carnegie Mellon University, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Milwaukee Art Museum, UC Berkeley, Alfred University, The Power Plant, and Project Row Houses amongst many others.

She is the author of several books, most recently Defiantly Optimistic: Turning Up in a World on Fire. She divides her time between Chicago, where she founded Garbage Hill Farm, and Ithaca, NY.

If you have an exhibition, project, publication, or opportunity you’d like us to know about and share with our readers, send submissions for future installments to artforearm@gmail.com with the subject OPEN ARMS.

Exhibitions

In Her Place at the Frist Museum in Nashville, TN—a robust exhibition highlighting the prominent position and community-building of women artists in Music City. Through April 26, 2026.

Land Arts of the American West 2025 at the Museum of Texas Tech in Lubbock, TX—this exhibition culminates a months-long transdisciplinary field program, presenting works by some of the AF current issue’s contributors and featuring a one-of-a-kind Art Forearm wall sculpture to commemorate the birth of this publication. Through April 19, 2026.

Monuments co-organized and co-presented by MOCA and The Brick in Los Angeles, CA—a groundbreaking and celebrated exhibition featuring a selection of decommissioned monuments with contemporary artworks borrowed and newly commissioned. Through May 3, 2026.

Whitney Biennial 2026 at the Whitney in NYC, NY—mixed reviews are pouring in and weary eyes make attempts to focus on the recent opening of the longest-running survey of contemporary art in the United States. 👀 Through August.

Projects

Dissonant Works in St. Louis, MO—a volunteer-run nonprofit arts organization in south city dedicated to cultivating a vibrant, experiential space where artists and musicians stretch the boundaries of creativity and share their work in an intimate setting.

Jarvis Square Pottery in Chicago, IL—a lovely and intimate space on the far north side where positive creative energies of many kinds intermingle and live musicians play on the regular.

Rock n Roll Video Show by the Ex-Bombers—a 90s-style public access video/variety show curated and hosted by a bluesy, psychedelic garage rock duo with cabaret style.

You can find it:

• in Portland, OR on Open Signal

  • Channel 22: Saturday, 03-14-2026 at 8:00 pm

  • Channel 22: Monday, 03-16-2026 at 8:30 pm

  • Channel 23: Friday, 03-20-2026 at 7:30 pm

• in Dartmouth, MA on DCTV Channel 95: Fridays and Saturdays at 5:00 pm

• in Altoona, PA on Channel 14: Fridays at 12:00 pm

• in Charleston, IL on WEIU: 4th Saturday of the month at 9:00 pm

It’s also shown in the following locations at irregular times so check your local access station:

Chicago, IL; Philadelphia, PA; Dayton, OH; San Francisco, CA; Urbana, IL; Springfield, IL; Chapel Hill/Durham, NC; Williamsburg, VA; St. Charles, MO; Bourne, MA; Murfreesboro, TN; New Haven, CT; Ocean Shores, WA; Petaluma, CA; Boothbay Harbor, ME; Kokomo, IN; Easthampton, MA; Mountain View, CA; Oradell, NJ; Ipswich, MA; Springfield, VT; Plymouth, NH; Westwood, MA; Nashua, NH; Norfolk, MA; Brookline, MA; Trempealeau, WI; Concord, MA; Salem, MA; and Fargo, ND.

Publications

Ancestor Bulletin by Jana Harper—a limited-edition publication of Ancestor Bulletin 1-39, a project documenting the artist’s research and creative practice about and with the Mackinac (Island) Band of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians, is available in a black and white limited edition book and a risographed special edition. To inquire about purchasing the book and/or to receive an occasional (free) bulletin in the mail, send your name and address to ancestorbulletin@gmail.com.

Dog Custody by Miles Matis-Uzzo—In the pages of their debut chapbook published by Bottlecap Press, Matis-Uzzo says, “my dog is also a wolf: submissive and unruly, obedient and howling.” Each poem taps into a feral frequency that goes for the jugular, channeling the raw emotional experiences that inhabit intimacy, love, and loss.

The Road Southwest Contemporary’s Spring-Summer Issue drops on March 20. Preorder using the coupon code SWCROAD15 to get 15% off your preorder or become a member to receive all future print issues.

Wednesday, The Second Coming—a lavishly illustrated biennial compendium of hitherto unpublished musings, spirited exchanges, provocative declarations, and carefully vetted accounts pertaining to the current milieu leavened with a modicum of fun for the welcome restoration of cheerful nonconformists and free-thinking aficionados enamored of Dark Culture.

Opportunities

The 2027 Creative Capital Open Call —awards individual artists in the visual arts, performing arts, film, and literature unrestricted project grants of up to $50,000 to create new work. Deadline Thursday, April 2, 2026 at 3PM ET.

Fire Island Artist Residency (FIAR)—the first residency in the United States exclusively for artists identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, intersex, two-spirit or queer. Deadline 11:59PM on April 1, 2026.

Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art—awards $10,000 to early career artists to produce major works of performance art in New York City. Deadline April 1, 2026.

The Studios at MASS MoCA—awards residencies between 2-4 weeks to visual artists and writers in all disciplines. Deadline May 1, 2026.

Do you have an exhibition, project, publication, or opportunity you’d like us to know about and share with our readers?

Send submissions for future installments to artforearm@gmail.com with the subject OPEN ARMS.

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Skylar Perez explores how color appears in soil, how those colors are classified in soil science, and how different approaches to color classification reflect different values about art, design, material, and place.

Soil is often introduced as the backdrop of human setting—a neutral ground beneath architecture, agriculture, and art. But soil is not neutral. It is one of the most chromatically expressive materials on Earth, carrying within its hues a record of geological formation, biological activity, chemical exchange, and human activity. To encounter soil closely is to encounter color not as surface but as process.

Across landscapes, soil expresses itself in deep reds, muted yellows, ashen grays, blues tinged with logged water, and blacks dense with organic life. Rather than aesthetic happenstance, these colors act as signals. They tell of oxygen and iron, of saturation and drought, of decomposition and genealogic geology. Soil color is the visible trace of invisible human and nonhuman labor, a slow choreography between rock, water, air, microbes, plants, and time.

In this sense, the soil behaves like a fantastically ever-changing microcosm. It is alive without being animated, expressive without intention, and composed without design. Its colors are not applied pigments. They emerge from conditions endured and processes sustained over long durations.

Why Soil Is the Color It Is

The chromatic logic of soil begins underground through pedogenesis, which is the gradual formation of soil from parent material under the influence of climate, organisms, topography, and time. As rock weathers, minerals are released and reorganized, interacting with water, oxygen, organic matter, and living organisms. Color emerges as one of the most immediate expressions of these interactions.

Iron plays a central role. In well-drained environments, iron oxidizes in the presence of oxygen, producing reds and yellows that stain the soil much like rust stains steel. In wetter or poorly drained conditions, where oxygen is limited, iron is reduced rather than oxidized, resulting in grays, greens, and bluish hues. Organic matter darkens soil as plant residues decompose and carbon accumulates near the surface, supporting dense microbial communities. Calcium carbonate and soluble salts lighten soils, producing pale whites and chalky tones common in arid and semi-arid regions.

These chromatic variations can be seen most clearly across soil strata and sections—the vertical layers that develop as soils form. A darkened surface horizon rich in organic matter gives way to underlying mineral layers shaped by leaching, accumulation, and chemical alteration. Reds and browns intensify where iron oxides collect in stable subsoils, while pale or mottled layers reveal fluctuating water tables and seasonal saturation. Soil color becomes a vertical archive, recording the movement of water, minerals, and energy through the ground.

Color in soil is therefore relational. It depends on moisture, temperature, parent material, vegetation, and disturbance. It shifts across depth and time, recording cycles of wet and dry, growth and decay, stability and disruption. Soil color is not fixed. It is contingent, always responding to its environment.

To see soil color is to read a story of place.

Color, Classification, and Soil Taxonomy

In soil science, color is not solely descriptive. It is diagnostic. Alongside texture and structure, soil color plays a central role in how soils are identified, classified, and mapped. Subtle shifts in hue, value, or chroma can indicate drainage conditions, oxidation states, organic matter content, or the presence of specific minerals.

A gray soil matrix interrupted by rust-colored inclusions signals periodic saturation and fluctuating oxygen levels. A uniformly red profile suggests long-term oxidation and stable drainage. Darkened surface layers point to sustained biological activity and carbon accumulation. These chromatic cues inform how soils function, how they store water and nutrients, and how they support plant and microbial life.

Soil taxonomy organizes soils according to how they form and behave rather than how they appear alone. Climate, organisms, texture, parent material, and time shape distinct soil profiles that are grouped into orders, suborders, and series. Color becomes a shorthand for these processes, compressing long environmental histories into legible visual form. Unlike industrial material classification, soil taxonomy accepts ambiguity. Boundaries blur across landscapes. Transitions are gradual. Classification, in this context, is not about eliminating complexity; it is about developing a shared language for describing the life of soil.

Earth Pigments and the Origins of Soil Mediums

Long before color systems were standardized, soil itself served as one of humanity’s earliest pigments. Ochres, umbers, siennas, and clays were gathered directly from the ground, ground into powders, and mixed with binders to create paint. These pigments carried the specificity of place. Their hues varied with geology and organic residues, embedding landscape directly into medium.

Pictographs, murals, and early architectural surfaces were cladded and colored through material locality rather than abstraction. Earth pigments were gathered, processed, and applied within the same landscapes that produced them. Their hues shifted with moisture, light, and age, registering environmental conditions over time. The instability of the material is not a flaw but a condition of its vitality, binding color to place and process rather than fixing it to surface alone. Visual cues of material weathering call for care and repair, allowing vernacular color and matter to remain in dialogue with place.

The rise of synthetic pigments and standardized color systems marked a turning point. Color became increasingly detached from material origin, reproducible across distance, and separated from the geological and ecological processes that once shaped it. What was gained in consistency was often lost in relational understanding, specifically the ability for material and color to communicate place, history, and knowledge of ground.

Disturbed and Contaminated Earth

Not all soil colors emerge from natural processes alone. Industrial disturbance introduces new chromatics into the ground. Heavy metals, petroleum residues, mining tailings, and chemical spills stain soils in radical ways. Iridescent sheens, acidic yellows, metallic blues, and unnaturally dark horizons appear as symptoms of altered chemistry.

In contaminated soils, color often reflects chemical processes that bind to and accumulate pollutants, clays, and organic matter. These anomalies complicate classification, challenging systems developed for relatively stable environments. These colors function as warnings as much as records. Soil becomes both an archive and a witness, recording histories of extraction, neglect, and toxicity.

The Munsell Soil Color System

To communicate soil’s variability with precision, soil scientists rely on the Munsell Soil Color Chart, a system that translates earth’s chromatic complexity into a shared visual language. Developed by artist, theorist, and educator Albert H. Munsell in the early twentieth century, the system organizes color through three perceptual attributes: hue, value, and chroma.

Hue situates soil within a color family, expressed through a combination of numbers and letters that describe its position along a perceptual spectrum. In the notation 10YR, for example, the letters indicate a hue between yellow and red, while the number specifies its exact location along that range. Value describes lightness or darkness, measured on a scale from light to dark, while chroma expresses intensity or saturation. In a designation such as 10YR 4/3, the number before the slash indicates value and the number after indicates chroma. These components allow soil color to be communicated with specificity while still acknowledging variation. A soil isn’t just red or brown. It is described relationally, as a temporal position within a system that reflects both perception and historic ground.

Within soil surveys and classification frameworks, Munsell notation functions as a bridge between observation and categorization. Soil color is assessed directly in the field, often under shifting light, changing moisture, and imperfect conditions. This situates Munsell not as an abstract system but as a tool embedded in embodied practice. It depends on judgment, experience, and calibration between observers.

The brilliance of the Munsell system lies in its acceptance of imperfection. It does not promise absolute consistency. Rather, it offers comparability, recognizing that soil is never constant. It is a system designed for kneeling in dirt, for consideration, and for seeing. Munsell acknowledges soil as a living material rather than a standardized product.

Munsell, Pantone, and the Politics of Color

As of 2007 both the Munsell and Pantone systems are owned by X-Rite, a corporation specializing in color measurement, calibration, and digital color management. This convergence places tools developed from very different epistemologies under a shared technological and commercial infrastructure. Soil color charts and corporate brand palettes now coexist within systems designed to translate color into data, screens, and devices. The contrast between color systems becomes quite philosophical when you get into the dirt of it.

When Pantone emerged from the needs of industrial production, printing, and global branding, its colors were fixed, named, and proprietary. A Pantone color is designed to appear identical regardless of location, material, or environment. Authority here lies in standardization and control. Color becomes a code.

Soil resists this logic. No two soils are identical. Even within a single field, color shifts subtly across meters and depths. Moisture alone can transform appearance, darkening values and muting chroma within minutes. Attempting to Pantone-match soil is absurd. Soil cannot be owned chromatically. It cannot be stabilized without erasing the conditions that produced its color.

Soil resists full capture. Light shifts it. Moisture alters it. Touch transforms it. No scanner can account for the smell of wet earth or the granularity of a rubbed horizon. The Munsell system acknowledges this resistance. Pantone, by design, minimizes it.

Where Pantone names and fixes, Munsell describes and relates. One supports mass production. The other supports ecological literacy. Their coexistence exposes a tension between the possible uses of color: as a method to enforce an idealized world versus a metric used to describe the world as it actually is.

Why Soil Color Matters

To pay attention to soil color is not only an act of care toward the land but also an inquiry into how knowledge itself is structured. The systems used to describe color shape what is seen, what is ignored, and what is valued. In this sense, soil color becomes a site where epistemologies collide.

Munsell’s color system emerged from observation and inquiry. Developed by an artist and chemist rather than a corporation, it was grounded in perception, variability, and relational understanding. Its adoption in soil science reflects this orientation. Color is read situationally, informed by moisture, light, and context. Judgment, disagreement, and calibration are not failures of the system. They are essential to it.

Pantone represents a different value structure. As a proprietary corporate system, it is driven by standardization, reproducibility, and control. Colors are fixed, named, and owned. Difference is minimized. Authority is centralized. This logic works well for industrial production and global branding. It works poorly for living materials.

Soil resists being reduced to a fixed reference. Its color changes with water, touch, and time. It records processes rather than surfaces. In doing so, it exposes the limits of systems designed to enforce sameness. Soil demands forms of knowledge that remain responsive, provisional, and grounded in material reality.

Soil color matters because it reminds us that the ground beneath us is not passive matter but an active archive of life, labor, and disturbance. In choosing systems that describe rather than dominate, that observe rather than extract, we begin to align design and science with the intelligence already present in the earth.

Skylar Perez is a Mexican-American artist, researcher, and designer, whose work explores the intersection of microbiology, living systems, land use, and biodesign. Rooted in the semi-arid landscapes of the Llano Estacado, his practice investigates how soil and microbes can reframe the future of humanity through architecture and ecology, revealing the ground as both an archive and a living participant in shaping the earth. Currently pursuing his Ph.D. at Texas Tech University, Perez teaches and researches within the realms of biodesign, architecture, and plant–soil science. His work advances a vision of design as a regenerative system, where the built environment operates in dialogue with the biological and geological processes that sustain life on Earth. Designing against desertification.

Ground level is where it all starts. The ground is a surface to build on, and ultimately the substance to which all things return. It is both a literal material (soil, gesso, clay, land) and a conceptual one (foundation, orientation, position, truth). The inaugural issue of this magazine is focused on ground because Art Forearm is itself trying to find its footing, and because I’ve been circling this idea—materially and philosophically—for a little while now.

For years I’ve been involuntarily preoccupied with the idea of grounding and its related concepts: land, place, and site. Maybe it began with working at a botanical garden. Then moving cities and trying to find my place in a new community. After that… habit, maybe? Or just the lovely persistence of curiosity? These themes have surfaced again and again in my projects around site-specificity and land art. So last year I decided to lean into the pull and embarked on a months-long investigation of human intervention in the land—I gave myself the space to dig in, so to speak. It was during this time that the idea for Art Forearm arrived, so it seems right to begin now with ground.

In this era of capitalist imperialism, it is impossible—and irresponsible—not to acknowledge the colonial power dynamics embedded in land. Language and writing play a central role in this. Stories are how power claims territory. Narratives establish ownership, belonging, and authority. As Palestinian-American literary critic Edward Said wrote: “Stories are at the heart of what explorers and novelists say about strange regions of the world; they also become the method colonized people use to assert their own identity and the existence of their own history.”

Nation itself, he reminds us, is merely a narration. Writing has been used as a tool of Western domination, but embodiment offers other ways of knowing and remembering that have often been suppressed. The body and the voice can be methods of inscription. Knowledge can be written through movement, rhythm, and ritual as well as through text. It is important to pay attention to who(se body) is speaking. And so this magazine will ask: Where are we writing from? And whose bodies are speaking when we do?

These questions prompt me to think about the evolution of social media—from written language to orality, from pithy status updates on Facebook to daily vlogs on TikTok—and what that shift might signify in a larger cultural sense. So many of us in the US lament that it seems like no one reads anymore. I wonder: if we were to frame this with less cynicism, could we sense a collective desire to break free from the constraints of written language? And if we’re reading less, could it mean we are becoming better listeners?

At Art Forearm, we care deeply about writing, but not only from people who identify as “writers.” You’ll see visual artists, musicians, fabricators, and cultural workers engaging language in ways that alternate between deeply poetic and very matter-of-fact. We want to make space for people to explore their relationship to words in the same way they explore their relationship to other materials. Which is to say: honestly, experimentally, and—this is important—sometimes imperfectly.

This first issue will roll out over the coming months, with posts delivered weekly. Posts will range from practical advice to conceptual reflection, each from a different contributor. You’ll find an essay that considers alien abduction from the edge of Michael Heizer’s Double Negative; a studio profile of a land-based, pedagogical practice; a technical tutorial on how to lay down ground for a uniquely smooth painting surface; and so much more.

Every post is free to read, and if you subscribe, they will arrive directly in your inbox. If you choose to become a paid subscriber, you’ll be helping us work toward paying contributors fairly based on standards established by Working Artists for the Greater Economy.

In a moment when public space feels increasingly unmoored in groundlessness, I’m interested in creating space that is grounded in collective effort. This issue is for and by people who spend their lives making things while reckoning with the contradictions of being human within staggeringly inhumane systems.

I’m glad you’re here with us.

Jennifer Seas
Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Art Forearm

03.05.2026 | The Chromatics of Ground: Soil Color and the Earth Archive by Skylar Perez

03.12.2026 | Open Arms

03.19.2026 | Studio Profile by Jen de los Reyes

03.26.2026 | Dear Jerry

04.02.2026 | Toolbox by James Warren

04.09.2026 | Money Talk with Chris Taylor

04.16.2026 | Technique Case Study by Michelle Wilson

04.23.2026 | Dear Jerry

04.30.2026 | Open Arms

05.07.2026 | Critical Essay by Anika Todd

05.14.2026 | Practice Notes by Jen de los Reyes

05.21.2026 | Dear Jerry

05.28.2026 | Open Arms

06.04.2026 | Global Indigenous Lens by Jennifer Seas

06.11.2026| Materials Watch by Nicole Rene Woodard

06.18.2026 | Dear Jerry

06.25.2026 | Open Arms

07.02.2026 | Technique Case Study by Maria Patricia Tinajero

07.09.2026 | Materials Watch by Process / Process

07.16.2026 | Critical Essay by Miles Matis-Uzzo

07.23.2026 | Dear Jerry

07.30.2026 | Next Issue Preview

Each issue (2x/year) investigates the material, ecological, and social infrastructures that shape art-making today, foregrounding accessibility and sustainability.

Volume I: Issue 1: Ground will be released here beginning in Spring 2026.

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