JASON LOGAN — love good color

I was introduced to Jason Logan through our mutual friend, Jon Schleuning. When Jason and I spoke on the phone, there was an instant connection between us, an enthusiasm and excitement about color, the world, and the change we are trying to make. Jason goes deep into his thoughts and projects. Unique and multi-faceted, he is an illustrator, writer, graphic designer, and creative director based in Toronto, Canada. He is also the founder of The Toronto Ink Company, makers of fine quality artist’s inks harvested from the streets and trees of Toronto. His inks are used by artists and designers around the world. I enjoyed our fluid interview immensely, and appreciated Jason’s curiosity, oftentimes turning the questions back to me.

Laura Guido-Clark: WHEN I SAY THE WORD COLOR, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF?

Jason Logan: I think of how Victoria Findlay calls it a verb.
I would add to that by saying it is kind of a dance of electrons and mind and materials, a moving target. A lot of the colors that I work with shift and change depending on the circumstances, PH balance, time of year that I collected the materials, soil quality, even the water added to a recipe can shift the tones. The colors I make and work with are alive rather than static, as more commercial colors are.

But also, I want to send this question back to you. Do your clients want a Pantone color or a feeling or a process? How do you keep things loose around color? You know how the good projects feel like a natural dialogue rather than a quick solution. I like how when we talked, we shared the deliciousness of working with communities and youth and how the good jobs are a wide-eyed opportunity to learn as much as teach. I guess I feel that about some of the color explorations that I am doing. How, in a way can I forget the names of color and just immerse myself.

LG-C: Over the course of my career I have discovered that my clients understand feelings, not the spectral world of color. I believe we were born understanding the nuanced language of color but somehow along the way, perhaps judgment or fear have dulled that instinct. In my work with kids and communities through Project Color Corps, this belief was reinforced. Kids are unfiltered and are deeply in touch with their emotions. I think that is what motivated me to create a new system of color, to encourage dialogue and revel in the nuance of color.

I agree wholeheartedly that teaching is a beautiful thing, an energy exchange, and oftentimes I come away completely renewed, feeling I got more than I gave.

LG-C: CAN YOU SHARE A SIGNIFICANT COLOR MEMORY OR YOUR FIRST COLOR MEMORY?

JL: I often think of the pulsing strobe color of sunlight hitting your eyelids. Between wake and sleep in the half-opened, pink-orange grey haze. Or underwater with your eyes closed. What is color before your brain is quite ready to define it? As a kid, I spent a lot of time in nature sometimes with my eyes closed or even purposely blurring my vision to let color come to me in kind of meditative waves.

LG-C: HOW DO YOU USE COLOR FOR SELF-EXPRESSION?

JL: I made ‘ink tests’ which are kind of postcards from a place I have discovered in ink making. The best ones are expressions of the earth itself rather than self-expression.

Again, I want to ask you if you have found ways to get away from self-expression toward something that feels like world expression or other-expression, or facilitation. How do your politics of making neighborhoods better nuance what self-expression can be?

LG-C: I believe that our work with children and communities, and my current work, approaching color more humanistically shifts it from singular to “color for all” which serves human need, overall impact, and well-being. When you look at color as “service” to people, places, and even objects, it takes on a much bigger energy. Since I believe in physics, and the idea that molecules exist in a state of pure potential, then directing our thoughts towards color serving humanity gives it an energy and charge that I believe is truly palpable.

LG-C: WHICH ONE OF YOUR SENSES, ASIDE FROM SIGHT, DO YOU MOST ASSOCIATE WITH COLOR?

JL: I can’t pick a single one. My natural inks have a scent that distinguishes them from commercial inks, they all have a tactile touch component, I guess you can’t hear them, but they do kind of sing and they contain words and ideas, some of them are eatable. I think some of them have a kind of 6th sense ability to conjure up a future of human, animal, plant, mineral interactions.

LG-C: HOW DOES COLOR PLAY A ROLE IN YOUR WORK?

JL: Color is one of the ways that materials can speak to people. Colors are beacons for change.

LG-C: WHAT IS SOMETHING YOU SAW LATELY THAT WAS COLOR CAPTIVATING OR REVELATORY?

JL: Bright orange strings of communicating Ochre-making bacteria in a ditch between a road and farmers field on a plane surrounded by volcanoes in the Pacific North West opened up to me by Heidi Gustafson the great keeper of the ochre archive.

LG-C: WHO HAD THE BIGGEST COLOR INFLUENCE ON YOU?

JL: Johannes Itten, my kids, Ooka of the Shadows, Heidi Gustafson, hundreds of people on Instagram, Rothko, Hilma af Klint, this could be its own google document.

photo ©Johannes Itten watercolor on paper 27 x 37 cm

LG-C: WHAT COLOR CHALLENGES DO YOU FACE?

JL: The instability and explaining the instability. Limits of time.

LG-C: DO YOU HAVE A PHILOSOPHY YOU WORK BY?

JL: Mary Oliver is maybe the closest I come to a philosophy:

“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”

JL: Tell me more about your philosophy of “optical optimism” and how that can work.

LG-C: I feel we don’t speak about beauty enough, almost as if it is a luxury or something that few are given. I believe that beauty is a human right and should be given to ALL!

The term “optical optimism” comes from the idea that it is difficult to muster hope when surrounded by hopeless environments. It is staggering, but 14 million American children attend deteriorating schools. With our nonprofit, we focus on neighborhoods, their emotional needs, dreams, and desires. Then we work to make their environments a reflection of that, reminding the students and communities that they are the beauty, and they have the power.

JL: How do we give people more permission to open up senses and hearts?

LG-C: What a good question! I don’t know that I have the answer, but perhaps the more we are willing to share from our hearts the more it allows people to be more vulnerable and share too. It opens them up to want to be part of something that has no agenda.

I feel the time is now, we have always needed one another but now the need is greater than ever.

JL: What could the future look like if empathy meets democracy? How do we create color revolutionaries?

LG-C: Another lovely question! We at Project Color Corps are trying to start a color revolution. I believe that love and empathy power everything. I think we approach it, as I try to do with most things, with deep intention. Let’s make this conversation a beginning, a way to hold the intention.