Happy New Year and a new set almost finished....

The past few weeks have been slow with the holidays but none the less a new set of flags is almost complete. This set started off with the idea of printing one thousand Buddhas. This was inspired by my visit to Sanjūsangen-dō Temple in Kyoto. There are 1000 Buddha sculptures in this temple and vary slightly from one another. Origi9nal intents are designed to start taking on a life of their own and so this set has.

While in Cleveland I went to see a show at the marvelous Cleveland Museum of Art. And let me tell you. I have not been moved by art this way since grad school. I saw an exhibit on the Chinese artist Fu Baoshi. He was a traditional ink brush painter that also worked in conjunction with the newly formed government in 1949. His work provided alot of answers for the current work I am doing. Below is just one of his pieces.

 

 

These four pieces were started before my trip to Cleveland and stalled in the midway process. On my return I jumped in the next day shook them up a bit and boom. Artists, myself at the top of the list, get into their process a bit too much at times. And this was certainly my case. The image below is the first complete one and I am very excited with it.

 

I know... I need to get my photo skills down a bit better. I have started to let them take on more of a life of their own. These are going to be more banner like then the previous ones I have completed. They have moved away from Sanjūsangen-dō directly. The Buddhas in these pieces are two of the thousand from the temple. A few funny questions popped about my brain while working on these. The biggest one was... Is it o.k. with me that these are functioning pretty much as pretty landscapes. I have this knack for totally outwitting myself when it comes to these kind of questions and my art. I've seen a million pretty landscapes and even have been adverse to making any in the past. SO... yes, I am good with it. These are still contributing to the Velvet Pelican mission statement. And very honestly, I like it.

 

I have decided to keep working on the flags project. What I would love to do with this set is send them out away from the Boston area as a hole set. There are three in all. I would like for someone to take them to a location and document them for me. In the end result... keep them and send me a good set of photos. Curious? Contact me!

 

Over the next month I am going to start looking at further ways to expand and substantiate Velvet Pelican Projects. Perhaps some networking or road trips! Have a suggestion? Let me know.

 

Until next time.