The First Color Is Red

A large-scale abstract artwork fills a gallery wall with a rhythmic grid of rectangular color panels. Soft yellows and earthy browns give way to muted greens, warm corals, vibrant pinks, and smoky purples, creating a flowing tapestry of shifting hues. The gently uneven edges and subtle variations in texture bring an organic warmth to the geometric arrangement, while sculptural works rest on low tables in the foreground.
A wall of hand-dyed paper sheets rises in bands of color, pale straw into rust, rose, and dusk violet, like a slow sunset read in rows. Below, low tables hold papers heaped with mounds of earth-colored adobe.
Title
The First Color Is Red
Artist
Christine Howard Sandoval
Date
2025
Description
Sixty-three pages of hand-dyed paper by Christine Howard Sandoval, a member of the Chalon Indian Nation, blind-embossed with faint phrases in her Chalon Ohlone ancestral language. Rising across the wall in bands of color, the pages touch on plant medicine, Indigenous knowledge, and the harms of colonization. Shown in Weather and the Whale at the Institute of the Arts and Sciences, UC Santa Cruz, alongside her Fourth Person Singular.
Artwork Type
Installation
Materiality
Paper
Climate & Ecology Themes
Indigenous Knowledge and Sovereignty
Land Stewardship and Conservation
Concepts
Colonialism and Decolonization
Memory and History
Place and Belonging
Methods & Approaches
Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Audience / Engagement Type
Public / General Audience
Location
Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, California
Geographic Scope
International / Global
Rights
Rights held by artist or creator
Website
Parrasch Heijnen Gallery
Affiliated Organizations
Fourth Person Singular
Weather and the Whale
UCSC Institute of the Arts and Sciences
Discipline / Field
Arts & Design
Item sets
California Art & Climate Archive
UC Santa Cruz
Media
A large-scale abstract artwork fills a gallery wall with a rhythmic grid of rectangular color panels. Soft yellows and earthy browns give way to muted greens, warm corals, vibrant pinks, and smoky purples, creating a flowing tapestry of shifting hues. The gently uneven edges and subtle variations in texture bring an organic warmth to the geometric arrangement, while sculptural works rest on low tables in the foreground.The First Color Is Red
A wall of hand-dyed paper sheets rises in bands of color, pale straw into rust, rose, and dusk violet, like a slow sunset read in rows. Below, low tables hold papers heaped with mounds of earth-colored adobe.Christine Howard Sandoval, The First Color Is Red and Fourth Person Singular