Spring Greens Window display at Cycle Heaven

Please follow the link to find the article on  the window display at Cycle Heaven (March to April 2011), using Tanka Art.

http://www.yorinspired.com/?p=1611

Green Smoke Rising, Tanka


Green Smoke Rising, 2006
Print on photographic paper, edition of 100, 1000mm x 605 mm.
£265 framed, £200 unframed



Tanka are an ancient form of Japanese Poetry still used today.  The Tanka Seasons and Green Smoke Rising artworks are a response to Japanese Tanka poetry written about a thousand years ago, between 1250 AD and 850 AD.  The poems are ancient but the imagery expressed in them is still true today.  I linked the old poems with contemporary imagery and technology to produce digital prints.   Their content resonates across time and space from the Far East to the West.

I discovered the Tanka poems and oriental aesthetics while studying at York St John University in 2005 and 2006 under the guidance of  Dr Hisashi Nakamura.  Dr Nakamura is a founder of the Anglo-Japanese Tanka society (www.tankasociety.com)  and originally translated the poems into English.  He later published them in a book The Floating Bridge: Tanka Poems in English (ISBN 978-1-85072-360-8).  


Alas!

How sad to think
That my body will end in pale green
After all,
A mist over the fields.

Poem by Ono No Komanchi, c.850, translated by Dr Hisashi Nakamura.




Installation of Monthly Map books

Home from Home Exhibition
Installed the Monthly Map Books today in a Victorian town house where each themed room displays a intriguing variation of artist works related to home and books.


These Monthly Map books are based on a visual source gathered for the Daily Colour Project (Sustaining Systems)  which I did in 2008.  The project was investigating the interaction of art and domestic daily situations.  As an emerging artist I was investigation how to establish an artistic practise and routine, when more everyday essential routines were demanding for my attention.  Through this investigation  it also became apparent that maintaining a daily routine was a low-key but important means of surviving when unpredictable and destabilising events happened.  


Detail from Monthly Map: August.
digital print on paper, thread, hardback book cover.

Also available at the book fair:  Monthly Maps:  September and November.

Invitation for Home to Home Exhibition on Facebook