My “Three Mongolians” was selected for inclusion in New Fibers 2008, an initiative of the Fiber Arts Network of Michigan, juried by Patricia Malarcher of the Surface Design Association. The show will run from May 6 through July 24 at two locations in Michigan — the University Art Gallery at Eastern Michigan University and the William Bonifas Fine Arts Center in Escanaba.
This work was my first total departure from traditional imagery. I applied the techniques of Tibetan appliqué to the portrayal of real human faces, capturing a moment of human interaction. The image is based on a photograph taken by a friend, Ernesto Noriega, in Mongolia several years ago, while I was still doing my apprenticeship with T.G. Dorjee Wangdu in Dharamsala. Ernesto and I both volunteered for the Planning Council in the early 1990. I’ve lost track of him over the years but, last I knew, he was living in Germany with his wife and two children. When I saw the photo in Ernesto’s slide show, I immediately imagined the colorful costumes of these wonderful characters translated into appliqué. The people in the photo were wearing traditional clothing made of the same silk satin (or so it appeared to me) that I used to make deities and idealized landscapes. The expressions on their faces drew me in and stayed with me for years. I carried around the print Ernesto had given me, as I moved from house to house, from India to Italy. More than ten years must have passed from that first slide show to the completion of this work in 2006. And I feel my initial intuition was validated in the result. I still enjoy sitting with these people, pondering their expressions and reveling in their colors.
I’m very pleased that this piece passed the critical eye of Pat Malarcher whose fine journal has inspired me over many years. One of the first issues of Surface Design I saw featured the work of an artist who created richly ornate assemblages with figures reminiscent (for me) of wrathful tantric deities, but drawn from his own imagination. I’ll post the artist’s name when I get back to Milan and find that old copy of the Surface Design Journal. His work is magical and I look back to it often wishing I were creative enough to conjure divine creatures from my imagination.
Hi Leslie
Thanks for sharing this piece about the three Mongolians. It’s much easier to appreciate the extent of the rich echanges between the three men. It is indeed beautiful. Congratulations on its being selected for the show in Michigan.
Louise
Thanks, Louise. So you see them as men? There’s an ongoing debate and speculation as to whether they are men or women. After first seeing the slide, I kept it in my memory as a picture of three women and referred to it that way when I asked my friend for a print. He seemed to understand which photo I was referring to. But when I got the print, I realized that at least one of the figures was a man, the bigger, more separate one on our left. I think the smaller one in the middle is a woman with her hair pulled back, and I’m not sure about the one on the right. I’ll probably never know, but the ambivalence makes it even more interesting and gives me a different perspective with each observation.
Leslie
wow, this is a gorgeous images. No wonder it got in — who could turn it down?
Thanks, PaM!