Messages in Bottles

Happy New Year! At least it finally seems like New Year in my studio, for the large pile of unfinished work from December 2017 that was on and around my easel has finally been finished - twenty small paintings, one drawing, and three collages.

The work began with a homemade Christmas gift - a stone seal inscribed with Chinese seal script for a writer friend of mine. Every now and then I am inspired to carve one in the traditional techniques I learned years ago as a graduate student at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing. Carving these blocks has always had a calming effect and it seemed a fitting way to end a tumultuous year.

In carving this last stone block, I decided to try the fancy method of carving the top and sides as well as the reverse image for printing on the bottom. Because my friend is an avid collector of all things cat, living and visages, I carved images of cats on the sides of the stone. Two sides were faces reminiscent of the tao tieh tiger masks found on ancient bronzes. The body of the cat embellished the remaining two sides.

I took prints of the sides of the stone, as well as a rubbing of the Chinese character "mao" on the top. I made ten sets each on white mulberry paper and golden bamboo paper. Getting ambitious about what else I might do with these images, I made prints on paper in variously colored acrylic paints. The piles of prints remained on my easel while I traveled north to visit friends, relatives, and museums.

On my museum trip, I made several studies of Byzantine, Persian, Greek and Roman glass bottles. They fascinated me. I knew that I could use these forms in some way when I returned home.

Back in my Orangeburg studio, I set to work painting the stone prints in to bottle shapes, sometimes using previously carved linoleum stamps for added embellishments.  I made about twenty of these. A nice collection of work, which I will post about in

increments.