Italian to Turkish textiles, cardboard art, Susan Sontag and me t

Today there was a presentation from Hajji Baba and the New England Rug Society

The nice part about these programs is that the slides are captioned so you can see the age and usually location of the works.

Here Gerard Paquin was examining the transfer and borrowing of design, from Italian silk weaving to Turkish wool, and most of the slides show silk on the left, wool right. 

The idea was that wool is much less expensive a medium, so it was economical to borrow design and adapt it to purpose. Usually the silk pieces were wallhangings, the Turkish wool were  rugs, and later in the slides, cushion covers. 

I'll just run the pictures since I don't think we're vitally interested in the technical terms he was firing around.

This shows the sheer size of the interiors where textiles were hung.

He also showed a couple of Persian miniature paintings showing rugs in action. And he referred to book design as sometimes being inspired by these motifs.

He's a collector rather than a scholar, so the idea, to him, is to enjoy the designs rather than analyze the techniques and history.  So let's do that! It's amazing to have no-cost access to this kind of work, often in private collections and distant museums.

Nearer home I've been thinking and making cardboard based art.

First, thinking.  I found a paragraph on Susan Sontag's likes and dislikes, which amused me a lot. Quite a few are on my list, too!

I never knew how many preferences I had in common with her. The resemblance ends there, I think.

And I set to work on a cardboard artwork.

This is the divider from a Misfits box, opened up, to make the shape of a Japanese long narrow landscape.

It's corrugated, so I drew my design with a graphite stick, not easy to see here

Then I started carving off the top layer

And seeing the lovely contrasting textures happening

I've been wanting to do some of this carving and got a bit sidetracked. I kept all the pieces carved off, curly bits, because I may use them. This is a low-waste piece ss well as an artwork.

After I got to this point I was so tired I needed to stop, but first I went upstairs to empty the dryer. I found when I got there I literally had to sit on the floor to rest. After a few minutes I was able to get downstairs, where the kettle was boiling, make tea and rest on the sofa.  Art is an aerobic activity! Fine now.

And here's a very appealing artist I just found out about from Jacqueline Durban

Happy evening everyone, late getting here today, one thing and another. Enjoy art and making if you like making, or just looking. All good.