Friday, June 13, 2008

Two “techniques”

Since it’s our ATC trading night at The Hive, I thought I’d incorporate a couple of techniques from Mixed Emulsions for Jen’s monthly challenge: using handmade mulberry paper and ink on embossed paper.
But I was leery of the Asian theme to be honest. Even though I love eastern art—Chinese brush painting, Tibetan sand mandalas, Indian yoga paintings, and so on—I shy away from using Asian elements in my work. While I feel free to play around with images from the western canon, I’m not comfortable altering elements from another culture, especially when I don’t know the rules. To get around this, I chose a Japanese theme with Japanese papers, and even though I took a conservative approach, it was inspiring to work with something new.

4 comments:

Leslie Jane Moran said...

Oh Susan, these are just wonderful.

Your homage to the Washi theme of the week!

Wait till you see Barbara Bunke's papers at BB's. I resisted, but since I am now spurred on to get the Mixed Emulsions book and start on my own challenge, I'll be into them with a vengance. Thanks again for sharing your wonderfully inspiring work.

azirca said...

I know what you mean about not using elements from other cultures in your work, I don't feel all that comfortable either so tend to shy away from them as I would not want to use an element that might be sacred in the wrong way.
These Asian inspired ATC's are really lovely though, those Japanese papers are gorgeous.

Anonymous said...

Brilliant as usual!!!

martha brown said...

WOW! darn it I missed them, LOL!