Color Walk

By Amy Sillman

Go on a color tour of your town! Spend a whole day out and about. Look for color everywhere—but NOT at a museum or art gallery.

You might start with easy things, like the red, yellow, and green of traffic lights. But soon you will notice more and more. Colors are used in lots of ways. Bring a notebook. Write down how colors are used:

• to mean something special (symbolic)
• to look nice together (harmonic)
• as shapes
• as warnings
• as advertisements
• as celebrations
• to show what a person likes

What colors do you like? How do people use color to decorate themselves? What colorful objects do you see in the world? What might it mean if a man wears a pink jacket, or a woman wears a bright orange uniform?

Look at how colors are used—or not used—in these places:

• on buildings and outside walls
• on billboards
• on products
• at grocery stores
• on TV screens
• at parks or city buildings
• at police stations or beauty salons
• and finally, in art at a museum

What rules or ideas do we have about colors? Where do people avoid using certain colors?

Try to think about ONLY color—nothing else. First, study color out in the world. THEN go to a museum and study how color works in art.

After you study color carefully, try making your own color experiments. For example, wear or use a color on your body for a whole day in a surprising way. Or make a colored object or flag. Put it in a public place. Let it send a mystery message using only color—a message you make up yourself. Then watch what happens!

Activity Summary

Topic: Exploring color

Suitable for:

• Beginning level
• Intermediate level
• Advanced level

Suggested media:

• Installation art (art you build or set up in a space)
• Performance art (art made through action, like a live event)

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About Amy Sillman

Artist Biography

Born in 1955 in Detroit, Michigan.
She now lives in New York, New York.

Amy Sillman is an artist who paints. Her work looks closely at how paint feels and looks, and also at ideas and feelings. She uses bold brushstrokes, dabs, drizzles, and thick layers of paint. This makes her art feel very physical, like you can feel the movement in it.

Sometimes she makes careful oil paintings. Other times she draws close friends using black ink. Her art explores big ideas like feminism (equal rights and fair treatment for women), performance, and humor.

Before she became an artist, Sillman had many different jobs. She worked in a fish cannery in Alaska. She worked in a silkscreen factory in Chicago. She also studied the Japanese language and Japanese literature for a year at New York University.

Finally, she found her way to painting. She studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. After she finished school, she spent ten more years creating, experimenting, and learning how to paint even better.