underpinnings

images from the tip of india posted here.

i write from beautiful kovalam. we had our doshas read by an ayurvedic doctor who sentenced jim to prison food and punishment while perri's prescription was something like divine debauchery. perhaps we should get a second opinion. the holistic analysis did get me thinking about the underpinnings of life in south india. the food...so delicious and wild but based on a tried and true system of ancient medicine to balance the spicy and sour, sweet and salty. it has me thinking about monsoon (wherever it is...) as the structure within the storm's expression...and kolams as being less about the serpentine lines of the gesture and more about the dot structure...the constellation that the contour steers by. 3-5-7-5-3 or 2-4-2. without the clarity of math, there would be no lines to the labyrinth. from here, that idea feels like it could make a good painting. but only after my daily dose of bacon.

working from the ground plane

jim is here now and we are taking the long way around to goa...chasing the monsoon without a drop of rain as of yet. i am idly searching for kolams, which brings attention back to the ground plane. here are a couplea shots from padmanabhapuram. moments of apparent emptiness in the vibrant crush that is india. more images from madurai to kanyakumari are posted here.

i love hitting the road...

...with unfinished paintings on the boards. i carry them like dreams or morsels or distant relatives...banking on a trust that the identity of resemblance holds true over the years and miles. this is why i wish to paint places instead of people...places for people to meet and explore a shared inhabitance beyond the site-specific. one of these days i'll get back to the kolams...promise....

works in progress

a few snaps from my studio today.

it's not so simple...

...as flying half-way around the world, opening the paintbox and making some art. which is not to say that i haven't been working. i spend a few hours each day in the studio but the mad torrent of creative energy must be coalescing somewhere out over the andaman sea while the rest of us are sweating it out in town. i would describe the three paintings currently underway as pre-monsoon. clouds gather and disperse. a few drops fall with the rumble of distant thunder and a weak flash. but the real meat of the storm, the chewy goodness of hard rain on dirt roads and the mad twisting wind has yet to make landfall. according to the indian meterological department, this is simply the nature of onset. the monsoon will come. it always does. it's happening right now, out over the sea beyond our reach. and it will make landfall. it's just a matter of pressure, temperature, wind, time, and paint.

what is a kolam?

here is a kolam outside of a house in tamil nadu. courtesy of wikimedia.

Project Description

“Truth is a pathless land.”
- Jiddu Krishnamurti

In the hours before dawn, millions of women and girls in Tamil Nadu sweep the threshold of their homes, purify the ground outside, and, with a fistful of white rice powder, proceed to draw a kolam. Kolams are intricate designs combining form, motion, and symmetry in an ancient Dravidian drawing tradition. Over the course of the day, this prayer for prosperity is rained on, walked over, blown by the wind and otherwise obliterated. Each morning a new one is drawn. Through this process of creation and decay, kolams announce the coming of festivals, births, deaths, aspirations, and changes within the home. Designs are based on a system of dots and lines forming one, highly aesthetic, interwoven whole. The dots signify challenges we may encounter. Serpentine lines represent the journey, the Yatra, one takes through life. Each pattern carries a very specific message. Kolams are map, prayer, journey, and ritual. They combine a fixed-grid matrix with labyrinth-like motion, yielding questions of permanence, impermanence, mobility and place.

This project is dedicated to exploring traditions of place-making as daily ritual and devotional practice in the South Indian landscape. Over the course of five months, I will study the kolam drawing tradition, create and exhibit a series of artworks in India, and collect source material for installation works to be exhibited in the United States upon return. Inspiration will be drawn from kolam designs for puja rooms, pilgrimage sites, ashrams, temples, and for the home. The goal is not to pictorialize, exoticize, or aestheticize, but to convey the importance of place-making at thresholds throughout South India and examine similarities/differences with American culture. With heightened sensitivity towards our surroundings, we all may derive a deeper sense of place.