FOBA 2021 Challenge Book
Technique and materials used:
Materials include board covers, French Paper Company’s Dur-O-Tone paper for the body and spine and Zanders Mill Elephant Hide paper for the covers. The flags are hand-treated with walnut ink and watercolor and the text is hand-calligraphed, lettered with pointed and folded pens.
About the work:
Seeds of Joy explores the desire to inhabit the metaphysical place whose geography includes peace, happiness, understanding, and love. This work began as an exploration of (flag book) structure and a color palette that represents the Southwest and places of significance for me – the lands and creations of the ancestral puebloans. These places have loomed large throughout my life as places of beauty and deep spirituality. As I sought to move this artistic work beyond the purely visual exploration and capture a sense of the spiritual, my travels took an unexpected turn upon encountering the nine Buddhist prayers. These prayers are born from a different spiritual tradition than those of ancestral Puebloans, they both share many universal spiritual truths and a desire for harmony and peace among the earth and those who travel here.