During her extensive professional career, graphic designer Elisa Cordero has worked with color in several instances. She is a specialist in the subject. She teaches it at the Universidad Austral de Chile and has put it into practice in social housing projects aimed at generating belonging and identity in the buildings through the color chosen to paint them.

One of the most frequently used tools is the Ceresita color chart. Each option is identified with an alphanumeric code and a rather generic name. The explanation for this is that the supplier is from the United States and it is there that the pigments are manufactured and the names are chosen for the different types of white, for example.

Faced with this imported model, Cordero decided to create w1a ca11a to identify the chromatic atmosphere of the Los Ríos Region.

DEVELOPMENT

The researcher and academic was awarded resources from the Fondart Nacional, in the Artistic Creation Line of the Ministry of Cultures. And a year ago she began a long journey of exploration of the territory.

“I could not produce my own colors, so I opted to refer to existing charts, such as the Natural Color System of Sweden, which are international languages, to compare the available options with the colors of the region. Since there is an established code, what we did was to identify the color that most closely resembled the colors in our landscape,” he explains.

As a result, there is now a regional chart with specific names assigned to 208 regional colors, plus another 142 that have yet to be sorted and coded. There is, for example, the “Chaihuín Blue/Sea”.

The measurements were made in the field and specifically in rural sectors of the twelve communes. Areas were chosen away from more populated places, where there are colors that mark the passage from one locality to another. Excavations were even made to determine that the region has five families of soil colors.

TO VIEW

The project called “Los Ríos in Colors” seeks to be installed in the creative community of the region. The medium-term purpose is that painters and artists in general can become familiar with the new chart so that they can use it in their proposals. The results were recently presented at an international forum, where it was also shown how UACh students are using the regional chart.

Also working on the initiative led by Cordero were Víctor Gerding (forestry engineer), Carlos Rojas (geographer), Eréndira Martinez (graphic designer), Belén Bandera (designer), Ingrid Calvo (graphic designer), Catalina García (designer), Camila Gómez Marañon (designer), Andrea Aburro (business administration engineer) and Natalia Figueroa (UACh design student). At 6:00 p.m. today, the first public exhibition of the project will be inaugurated at Galería Réplica (Los Laureles Nº 168), with a montage of the color chart and samples of the elements that were measured in the field work. Among the attractions are stones, a mandala and the different types of soil arranged in petri dishes. The information will be presented in a catalog for free distribution.