Paths Crossed: Daniela Naomi Molnar
The pigment maker, poet, and educator on transmuting planetary and intergenerational grief into wonder.
I first met Daniela Naomi Molnar in Portland, Oregon, in 2021 at a time when the world felt laden with grief. The artist, award-winning poet, pigment worker, educator, and wilderness guide had posted a sublet on Listings Project, a great community founded by my cousin Stephanie Diamond. I moved into Daniela’s beautiful back house for that summer.
My conversations with Daniela have always been poetic balms amid existential questioning. She is not one to shy away from weighty topics, with climate grief and intergenerational trauma central to her work. But it is wonder that she invites in again and again, using pigments as vessels of transformation to shift trauma to love. Rocks, weeds, wildflowers, and bones: Daniela has long been foraging in her own backyard and in wild and urban places throughout the world, extracting color from natural pigments, moving paint across paper through rivers of water to see what she might find. Her most recent, multidisciplinary project, “Memory of a Larger Mind,” has seen her traveling to sites of ecocide and historical genocide to gather a palette of pigments, asking what spiritual, emotional, or social transformation might occur in these processes.
In Daniela I saw a kindred spirit who understood that many things can be true at the same time—awe and optimism alongside pain and despair. The stunning beauty of the Pacific Northwest was all new to me during the time we met, but against the backdrop of a wildfire season that consistently choked the air. Masks became twofold amid Covid’s collective trauma. Add to that the very personal, familial grief I was moving through after losing my mother. As neighbors and fellow adventurers, we would both disappear for days on end in our respective vans—she to a residency in eastern Oregon or to forage on the central coast, I to the north coast to take in the elements, ocean air alongside feelings of loss and disconnection.
Daniela’s debut book, CHORUS, recently won the 2024 Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Here, we deep dive into the definitions, details, and lived experiences of pigment making, writing, grief, and the staggering resilience of nature—and therefore each of us.
I remember sitting in your backyard sharing some wine, a bright, beautiful tangle of bowls and brushes among strewn piles of books, plants, and rocks. The projector was on and you were working on your ongoing series called “New Earth.” What’s at the heart of that series?
I started “New Earth” thinking I’d explain or show climate change in a new, artistic way. But what I ended up learning through doing that work was that the deeper I went into translating the scientific information into paintings, the more confused I became. Eventually, by going deeper and deeper into that confusion, I came out with an understanding that, while climate change is certainly an issue that calls for the expertise of scientists, politicians, economists, and sociologists, we also need to treat it like a psychological, emotional, and spiritual issue. It can’t just be left to the sciences to be like, okay, they're going to figure it out. The psychological effects of climate change are much more widely recognized now, but when I started this series, most people had never heard the term “climate grief”—the conversation around this aspect of the issue was in its infancy.
The “New Earth” paintings, if I remember, are composed of shapes of land, from maps you’ve studied, that were covered by glaciers until climate change recently uncovered them?
Yes. I like to refer to these shapes as raw wounds now exposed to the earth. This is a visceral image but it’s also evoking the reality that as soon as a wound occurs, the body instantly begins its healing.
Art—pigment work, painting, and poetry—has always been your container for the confusion. Those, as you’ve explained to me previously, are all processes of transmutation.
My practice has been a constant, circular, repetitive work that doesn’t stop because that's how grief operates. It's been a daily practice of shifting the various emotions that constitute grief into the various emotions that constitute wonder.
Can you give me some concrete examples as to how this wonder is experienced?
Sure. On the anniversary of my maternal grandmother Rosalie’s death a few years ago, I bought some bright magenta peonies from the farmers’ market. I was very close with my grandmother. She features heavily in a lot of my writing and she was a poet, who, by example, taught me a lot about poetry and what it means to live as a poet. So I was feeling her presence very strongly, and I was deep in grief for her. She had a really horrible, difficult life in many ways. And yet she was someone who was so full of wonder, so full of joy.
So, on that day, I decided to lake these flowers to make a pigment in her honor—laking is a process that makes botanical pigments lightfast [resistant to fading when exposed to the light]. And in the laking process, the original color of the flowers often shifts. Sometimes dramatically, sometimes subtly. When I laked these hot pink, magenta peonies, it turned into this bright chartreuse, like almost the complete opposite, you know? And that moment was a moment of absolute, utter wonder because I just felt like I was in direct contact with her spirit. Bright yellow-green is such a potent color of aliveness. It’s the color of new shoots and spring and new leaves. Moments like that moment have recurred thousands of times since then. And every single time, it’s a moment of instantiated wonder, of transmutation from one state to another.
ON PIGMENT MAKING
There seems to be a lot more cultural attention on natural pigment making in the last couple years. How did you get into this?
My introduction came through a pigment worker and friend, an artist named Tilke Elkins. She has a great website called Wild Pigment Project. I was a visiting artist for a backcountry residency in Montana, and I was giving the artists feedback on their work. And she was like, “Well, my work is down here.” So I followed her up this creek bed and we walked and walked and I was thinking, Where’s this woman taking me? We eventually got to this big flat rock next to this creek and she had found all of these pigment rocks nearby and basically created a painting on this big flat rock with those rocks. And my mind was just blown. I didn't know that pigment that bright could exist in rocks and that one could do such a thing with them. I had been a painter for decades. And I knew when you buy a tube of yellow ochre, you’re buying ground-up rock, like I knew that, but I hadn’t really put two and two together.
That must have really opened your eyes as a hiker and wilderness guide?
For sure. I was already in love with being out in these places, but this gave me a different eye for the world. It’s quite common when people start making pigments that their entire world becomes a paint box. People become children again, full of wonder.
Can you tell me a bit more about making pigment from bones you have found in the wilderness?
It’s a process as old as cave paintings. With bone black, the bone is carbonized in an oxygen-poor container over a very, very hot fire that needs to burn for four to five hours. In the end, you open up your container and you have these gorgeous, perfectly preserved silver-black shiny objects. The process and the resultant pigment are both incredible vessels of transmutation—the fire is such an obvious symbol of transformation and change. And when you put the bone through this intense process, it goes from being the pale, hidden matter that held a wild creature up and moved them around the world to this pure, intensely silver-black material. It’s a color that demands attention but also stays somehow hidden in a painting.
You must feel humbled around such practices.
Yes, it's quite common that once people start doing this work, we become less and less blasé about doing it. One humbling aspect is the violence inherent in grinding up a rock or grinding up a bone because it will never ever again be a rock or a bone. Maybe at some point in the far future it will rematerialize into something like that. But it's essentially an irreversible process.
Do you have any rituals surrounding these processes?
The process itself is my ritual. I grew up with so much religion; I'm a little allergic to formal methods of prayer. But I'm always offering thanks and gratitude in various ways and doing my best to notice the subtle processes below and within my actions.
ON LANDS OF HISTORIC GENOCIDE: POLAND
We’ve talked about the fact that all four of your grandparents survived concentration camps; both of your grandmothers survived Auschwitz. In your work, you have asked what pigments one might find in a former concentration camp and how it might feel to encounter, transform, and share these colors? Can you tell me about the site you traveled to for your latest project?
I approached KL Płaszów, a former concentration camp just outside of Krakow, Poland, with a very direct connection to the place: it’s likely that at least two, perhaps all four, of my grandparents were enslaved in this camp during the Holocaust. This particular camp sort of fell out of public oversight for various reasons, and it has essentially turned into an unofficial park where people walk their dogs and sunbathe and have picnics—it’s an ethically complicated place because the local people cherish it as a much-needed urban green space, but is it appropriate to have a picnic atop a mass grave? So an organization in Krakow brought me there as part of years of work that they've done to try to draw public attention to this situation. I wanted to visit this spot not to reenact or fetishize its trauma but to find ways toward transformation, community exchange, healing, and learning.
What did you find there?
I didn't know what I was going to find. But what I found was essentially these semi-wild, urban lands, where there were lots of what would basically be called weeds. And because I was there in June, everything was blooming. So I made a whole bunch of botanical pigments from these weeds. Weeds are not given a whole lot of respect, but many of the plants that were growing there were in some way healing plants. And what I mean by that is that they were either healing to the human body, or they were healing to the earth as nitrogen fixers or with soil-building capacities, or both. And plants that heal in some way are also often the plants that make pigments. It’s both fascinating and makes perfect sense to me that the word “pigment,” etymologically, can be traced back to “medicine.”
How were you received by the community?
In a word, it was just beautiful. I wasn't trying to convince the community of anything, they already were on board, super interested in what these pigments might offer in terms of ways to think about this land differently. And I just ended up in a lot of really beautiful conversations. The people who came to support the work were mostly the young people of Krakow. The older generations are often less interested in new narratives about the past and how it might be seen today…but it was inspiring how many young people showed up with enthusiasm and openness.
Was there a moment of grief turned wonder that stands out?
There was a lot of rain while I was there. It would rain almost every afternoon and evening, and every time I would go to Płaszów there would be a new bunch of flowers that had bloomed early that morning after the rain. The land was so profoundly alive! And that's something that really surprised me. I hadn’t known if I would get there and be working with land that was still carrying its trauma in a way that was going to be difficult to engage with. And there were spots there where I felt that, areas in which I couldn't spend too much time. But on the whole that land is healing itself. The colors that I got are so life-giving and so gentle. A lot of really vivid, pastel yellows came from those weeds.
What do you feel like the earth is saying to you the most when you're in conversation with it?
Yeah, that's a great question. I think you touched on this idea once in our conversations that we say we love nature but generally, as a culture, we don't think nature loves us back. I think a lot of what I receive when I’m communicating with other-than-human forms of life is this overwhelming sense of love and resilience. That life wants to keep life going. And humans are part of that liveliness—we are just one form of it, an especially self-reflective form. There’s a lot of resilience and love that is just extant in nature, in life itself, if we can get quiet enough to receive it.
ON LANDS OF ECOCIDE: THE ARCTIC CIRCLE
Most recently you were on a sailboat in the Arctic, where you were surrounded by glaciers and witnessing the direct effects of climate change. Can you tell me more about this experience?
The Arctic and the Antarctic are the two places on the planet that are being affected most dramatically and rapidly by climate change. In the Arctic, you can literally see change hour by hour or day by day, in terms of the glaciers melting and the way that's affecting wildlife and human communities. I was there because for many years I’ve been studying these places, and I wanted to be there in my body, you know? I wanted to be there in my senses, not just through the story that science or writing or others’ artwork can provide. So that's why I went. And I was terrified because I was going on a sailboat for weeks with a bunch of strangers. For me, as someone who's really attached to privacy and who's super introverted, that situation felt so outside my comfort zone. I was going to have a roommate, share a bathroom, share meals.
I’m a huge believer in that nothing transformative happens in the comfort zone, so I think that’s pretty great.
Yes! And that proved true.
I was also scared of what it would feel like on an emotional level. To be confronted with so much immediacy by these beings—because I consider glaciers to have a sort of sentience, a sort of aliveness—and what it would be like to be surrounded by that much death. And it was fucking horrible. In so many ways, it was just unbearably tragic. The reindeer are starving; the polar bears are starving; the human communities are being irreversibly altered. We'd be looking at a glacier that had receded half a mile in three months according to our guide. But then, literally simultaneously, with the same force, it was all so full of joy and beauty, and a type of weird humor.
How do you mean?
I’m still trying to figure it out, it’s mysterious to me, but I've talked with a range of people who have spent a lot of time with glaciers. And across the board, everyone I've talked to can confirm that it's a thing that when people are around glaciers there's a sort of childlikeness that comes out—and these are people who are scientists or artists, who are deeply involved in these glaciers’ lives and not taking any of it lightly. People laugh a lot, goof around, play. It made me think a lot about what death is for other-than-human entities, and what role humor has in all of this.
Did you get past your fears? And what pigments did you collect?
In many ways it was a deeply life changing trip. A lot changed after. I changed the way that I thought about myself and my personality in terms of the fears I had around being in such close proximity to other people. It definitely brought some stuff to light that I think I've been overlooking and allowed me to make some necessary changes in my life.
And I did get a bunch of pigments from there. It hasn't felt like time yet to process most of them. It often takes a while for the intuitive connection to feel ready. But I have processed a few of them, and they are beautiful and extremely powerful. If I had been there at a different time of year, there would have been plants, but what I found in October was mostly rocks and small pieces of rusted metal. The rust can be used to shift the color of other pigments, or it can also be used on its own to make pigment.
ON CHORUS
So congrats on your book, CHORUS. The more I dove into it, the more I was inspired by the richness of the material, the depth and detail and amount of work that must have gone into it. What was that process like?
Thank you for reading it. That's really nice to hear. I actually wrote it in about three months, and there was an intensity, I was writing all the time. I didn't plan it, it just happened. But it was the culmination of many, many years, and sometimes, that's how those things come out. They just sort of tumble out all at once, and that's what happened with that one.
I pulled a passage that resonated and I’m hoping you can share a bit about what it means to you:
Thank you for that. I think this one is still so relevant, and relevant to our conversations—that thing about why am I here at 5 a.m. every day, to appear. And I do think that we write or paint or create ourselves into existence every single day, and we do that by what we pay attention to and by what and who and how we love. And that is something I still question every day, like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? Why am I here? All those self-doubts come in constantly. And also, I truly believe that no matter what you're doing, that that is the only real work: to make yourself appear.
I think you and I have witnessed each other be nomadic, or seek, whether it’s tapping into the different parts of our spirit or in restlessness. I’m curious what you feel right now is your deepest truth or definition of home?
Yeah. It's a good question. I have a few answers. One is that when I was in the Arctic, I felt extremely disoriented by how strange everything is there. The light is weird; the sun is weird; the moon is weird; the stars are weird. Everything about that place is unlike anywhere else on the planet. And what I discovered in that disorientation was that I felt super at home. I have been doing a kind of searching for years, and it really made me think that maybe the thing I'm actually searching for isn't home so much as a diasporic home. A home that exists in disorientation, in movement, in liminal space, in multiple orientations at once. And that is very much the inheritance that I ultimately have. Everywhere that my ancestors have ever lived, they've been strangers, and they've been only partially wanted or barely accepted. My parents are immigrants and have a strong relationship and love for this country, but everyone they talk to, the second question is always, “Where are you from?” And they've been here for 50 years.
I also felt at home in the Arctic light. It’s this beautiful desert, the Arctic. Many people don't know that, but it's desert light. And I realized that a big part of what makes me feel at home is a certain type of light that I feel very situated within. It doesn't even really matter what's around me topographically. So that's another answer: home is desert light.
A third answer is that home is love, the people I love and the other-than-human lives I love. I’m consciously learning how to live into that home. It’s the work I’m most enmeshed in right now.
What are you most proud of right now?
Wow, what a good and difficult question. I think I'm proud of my tenacity and resilience. I think that's what I'm most proud of. I've had some pretty tough stuff occur over the last 10 to 15 years. And I'm proud of the ways I've come through the tough stuff with a more open heart, more humility, and less judgment towards myself and others. Because I think difficult stuff can unfortunately have the opposite effect, making hearts break closed rather than open. So I'm proud of the ways that I've remained committed to an open, loving view of myself and of the world.
What is lighting you up these days?
Poetry. Sunshine. Flowers. Love.