Picasso of Sand -- Commentary on Kseniya Simonova's sand art by Kyi May Kaung

Very talented and would do very well in animated film.

Though very young, with sensibilities of an old person -- like the Haitian writer Edwidge Dantikat (Krik Krak etc.) who says she was "born old."

I have done a variation of this process, without an empirical referent (in this case here War), starting in Boulder CO with artist David Chamberlain, who generously shared his process in a workshop.

He teamed us up randomly,three at a time, then two by two.

Only two who were brothers (musicians Don and Dave Grusin -- Dave famous for music for On Golden Pond, Little Drummer Boy, Year of Condor etc.) knew each other and David Chamberlain previously.

They added me because, the day before, I heard the Conference on World Affairs secretary say "She's a poet," and they added a ballet dancer and an Aboriginal artist from Australia also.

The music played for us was jazz, but at home now I use operatic arias.

Chamberlain produces mono-prints (single unique prints, such as one's fingerprint or footprint).

Prints are made (like this light box) on plastic plates (like plate glass) on acrylic paints spread with a brayer (roller).

We also used brayers and our hands in gloves to make marks.

The master printer in the print shop then picked each plate up carefully and placed them face down on a printing press, covered the plate with blankets and pressed with a hand crank (or mechanical press) and put finished paper prints (on paper worth $2-3 per sheet)sheet by sheet to dry on a special rack.

I was teamed about 15 minutes each with Don, and a Thai artist Rungsak from Chiangmai University. There is no time to talk or discuss, and anyway the Thai artist did not have enough English and I have almost no Thai.

In three mornings spread over three Conferences over three years we made about 40 prints each morning, working non-stop 9-12 noon. We were on our feet throughout the workshop and after each print, had to scrub off the plates and clean the table.

It was a bit like cooking together and every family knows how potentially murderous that can be.

The Conference kept most of the prints, but we were allowed to bring home the ones we worked on ourselves.

The master printer got the first choice and he truly had an impeccable eye for art.

A great deal of trust is needed, because once one turns one's back, the art partner may erase it all in an instant.

I longed to use color, but Dave made us start with black and white (for artistic rigor!) and I could only sneak in a light strain of yellow ochre. I have this print now. It shows hills like those near the Pearl River in China.

Later the Conference expanded this 1997 version, where I also read poetry to music to --

1. poetry and music with dance

and

2. A thirteen writer/artist extravaganza with music, poetry/prose and painting in a light box which was projected on a screen.

The correct name is Abstract Expressionism or Action Art.

The true print process above is very expensive (need a full press and workshop) and so now I work directly on paper or canvas (therefore no reverse print) and use brayers or a splash/pour/print technique.

"Versos?" where Mary Cassat, for instance, laid a piece of paper on her finished painting to produce a reverse print -- now will sell for close to 1/2 a million I think -- depending on how well known the artist is.

But the monoprints I/we made are single edition -- I did go to a DuPont-related facility, Qoro, in Wilmington DE and made high quality digital scans (Qoros) of one. The founder/owner of Qoro used to work as a DuPont engineer.

At the scan facility, I saw a big scanner that could scan a human being and an art original by Andrew Wyeth's father of a pirate scene.

-- The other type is Sand Mandalas, made of colored sand on wood plastered with yak butter.

This is part of Tibet Buddhism. Madalas are made to honor the Buddha, beautiful scenes like The Sermon in the Deer Park, the very first sermon preached by the Buddha.

I saw Tibetan monk make this in Philadelphia at the University Museum. They used little cones to shake/scrape down colored sand. There may have been a tape of a monk chanting in the background, but I remember best the sound of the cones scraping against each other, like cicada's wings.

The monk may have been Lopsang Samten, who was later in film about Tibet, written by Harrisan Ford's then wife Melissa Ford, but I don't think it was.

The monks do not keep the mandalas at all. They scrape it all off completely and then go in a procession with the community and throw the sand in a river for the water creatures.

Mandalas are amazingly intricate.

Commentary copyright Kyi May Kaung.

Original post from Internet follows:


This video shows the winner of "Ukraine™s Got Talent", Kseniya Simonova, 24, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II. Her talent, which admittedly is a strange one, is mesmeric to watch.

The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about $130,000.00

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.

It is replaced by a woman's face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman's face appears.

She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier.

This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house.

In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye.

The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine, resulted in one in four of the population being killed with eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million.


Kseniya Simonova says: (??? Editor)

"I find it difficult enough to create art using paper and pencils or paintbrushes, but using sand and fingers is beyond me. The art, especially when the war is used as the subject matter, even brings some audience members to tears. And there's surely no bigger compliment."


Please take time to see this amazing piece of art.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=vOhf3OvRXKg