Color as Culture | Liz Rutledge

For this color as culture assignment, we were asked to pick an item with cultural significance and look at how the colors (and the pigments that may have created them) interact with the object and the culture they're representing. As I don't really identify strongly with any culture, I chose to look at two of my lacrosse sticks, due to their rich history in Native American culture and in my life as well.

While the two that I chose to picture are made of plastic (nylon resin) and strung with nylon stringing and leather, they originate from a culture of handmade sticks made from natural materials (pictured top and bottom right). The game of lacrosse (baggataway as it was called in certain Northeastern tribes) was an integral part of Native American life, used both for enjoyment and as a method of determining the winner of land disputes. (Way better than atomic bombs, huh?) This richly ingrained history is connected to these plastic sticks still, despite how far they've come in technology, materials and appearance.

The modern game of lacrosse, and the plastic sticks that have taken over the scene in the last 10-15 years, has a very different aesthetic than the original handmade sticks, and afford players an opportunity to express themselves or represent their team colors with their dyeing and stringing choices. (I custom strung both of these sticks, and custom dyed the black head, so was responsible for these particular color choices.) The new colors present in modern sticks may take them far away from the originals, but in a way reflects the spirit that was present in the first sticks—the Native Americans believed (and I'm sure many still do) that a warrior's stick was linked to his soul, almost as an extension of his person. By being able to customize the colors of plastic sticks, we have taken back some level of control over the otherwise mass-produced items, injecting our spirit back into those nylon resin molds.