Curious Clouds
2022 - current
This project began as a journey to seek material knowledge in its various forms, from explicit verbal explanations and visual expression in historic objects to the tacit material understanding embodied in the hands of a maker. Along the way, I became enamored with some tiny cloud-like figurations in a 17th-century Indian kalamkari floorspread and began tracing their stylistic origins back through Persia and Central Asia to China.
Curious Clouds explores the formation and transfer of intangible cultural knowledge through these historic cloud motifs. The project approaches research from an artist’s perspective, forefronting material experimentation as a way to question where and in what forms knowledge resides.
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Chintz production in 17th-century India involved a complex process of applying natural dyes, mordants, and resists to create colorful cotton textiles. The multi-step process, performed over many weeks, was highly dependent on the local environment from the plants used to make natural dyes to the river water for washing away resists and the powerful subcontinental sun that bleached the backgrounds. The earliest chintz was hand drawn using a bamboo pen called a kalam, and thus is referred to as kalamkari.
untitled
2024
plant-dyed cotton; hand drawn mordants, resists, and natural dyes
5.5 x 6.75 inches
untitled
2024
plant-dyed cotton and eri silk; hand drawn mordant, resist, and natural dyes; hand quilted
11 x 11 inches
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Project Background
Coming soon…
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Material Research
Coming soon…
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Cloud motifs