In the wix editor, you can change the color of an individual column, or set it to an image. I need to set the color programmatically, by using corvid. How can that be done? Looks like column is missing the style mixin, but I would expect you can do all in corvid that you can do with the gui editor? Any ideas?
Which column do you mean? There are many columns out there 
Table-columns? Data-columns? Strip-Column? Page-Columns? Another column?
When you are asking a question, try to be as most possible detailed as you can with your description of your issue, then you will also get faster your answer.
When you know which element you are using, than you can search for this element in the CORVID-API-REFERENCE and you will find all possibilities of this element, which can done by CODE.
can this be done for a strip column?
You can updated the background of a Strip Column using this API - background - Velo API Reference - Wix.com
Although not setting the background colour directly, you can swap out the image with different colours as needed 