Color is Alive is a project about natural ink-making for screen printing techniques on paper and textiles. In 2021, artist and designer Greta D. Facchinato started to research how to extract color from our surroundings (plants, kitchen leftovers, and urban scraps) in order to turn them into sustainable inks suitable for screen printing.

By gravitating between The Netherlands and Italy she developed an archive of recipes that can guide others into realizing inks for printing techniques and obtaining bold or subtle hues. The recipes are shared in the artist's book "Color is Alive", a risograph limited edition publication working as a manual, containing a collection of reflections and precious lessons that the artist learned on the way by researching archives, reading, and printing, and speaking to other persons connected to the topic.

Nowadays we are more aware that most conventional art materials and printmaking inks are made of refined mineral oil and use chemicals that are harmful to ourselves and the environment. These toxic substances not only pass the bodies of the makers, but they also are absorbed into our sewage and, eventually, back into our food supply and our bodies. The focus of the project is to research which materials can be foraged from local surroundings and how to transform them into sustainable inks for printing techniques in order to design artworks that are not toxic for the artists who make them, the people who are owning them, or for our environment.

Ingredients: a bunch of soft vine sticks, a fire, a tin with a lid, 1/2 tsp Arabic gum, 1/4 tsp guar gum, a few drops of thyme oil, or a few cloves.

The research was made possible by Gemeente Den Haag and in collaboration with Grafische Werkplaats Den Haag.

This material is included in the Future Materials Bank's archive and in the Materials Design Map