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Two pages of waka poems by Ōshikōchi Mitsune (859?-925?).

The Next Poetry Broadside is Underway

       Several volunteers at Hypatia-in-the-Woods, myself included, are now involved in the production of the second poetry broadside. For this edition of the membership premium series, we decided to incorporate the effect known as suminagashi – treating the paper with this technique before printing Laurelyn Whitt’s poem “Well Without End.” on the prepared sheets. We were looking for a unique effect that would complement the language of the poem. Suminagashi takes on the appearance of flowing water.
Two pages of waka poems by Ōshikōchi Mitsune (859?-925?).

Two pages of waka poems by Ōshikōchi Mitsune (859?-925?). 20cm height, 32cm wide. Silver, Gold, Color, and ink on suminagashi paper. From a copy of the Sanjurokunin Kashu or “Thirty-Six Immortal Poets” kept in the Hongan-ji Temple, Kyoto. This multi-volume manuscript, which contains the oldest examples of marbled paper known today, was presented to the Emperor Shirakawa on his sixtieth birthday in 1118 C.E.

   “墨流し suminagashi, which means ‘floating ink’ in Japanese is the oldest method of decorative paper made with floating colors that is known today. Author Einen Miura states that the oldest reference to suminagashi papers are in the waka poems of Shigeharu, (825-880 CE), a son of the famed Heian era poet Narihira. Various claims have been made regarding the origins of suminagashi. Some think that it may have originally come from China. Others have proposed that it may have derived from an early form of ink divination. Another theory is that the process may have derived from a form of popular entertainment at the time, in which a freshly painted sumi painting was immersed into water, and the ink slowly dispersed from the paper and rose to the surface, forming curious designs. (more…)

Book Arts In Progress

ARTIST’S REPORT:  Pat Chupa, book artist (P. Chupa WordArts)

Preparing for an annual book arts show is always a mixture of excitement, stress, and gratifiying pleasure. If  one is trying to do the artistic work around the edges of a full-time ‘regular job’ – it becomes disproportionately fraught with the challenge of producing enough work that will be good enough to choose from – and also available for the time it must be displayed. Last year, I had pieces that I had done in earlier years, that were suitable and included in the First Annual Puget Sound Book Artists’ Exhibit. This year, I was a bit more anxious, as most of the pieces I created this year were larger commissioned pieces, that were shipped off to their owners, and therefore not available for the show. (more…)

On the new website …

We are close, so close, to going live with Hypatia’s new website, and what a moment that will be! I’ve said that yes, I can write blog posts, do some editing. After all, I’ve done web pages before. Of course, my first page was direct HTML coding, quite simple in design, but oh, so satisfying.

Later I rebuilt a whole site where I worked using the Microsoft Word “publish as HTML” feature — much to the dismay of my system admin folks. Too much embedded code, too slow, too big … and so, I moved on to Dreamweaver with its ability to strip out all that excess MS code. And I could view the pages as I worked in both formatted and HTML versions, satisfying my need to actually understand what was happening. Ah … I miss that program, but no longer have access to a server as I did before I retired. (more…)

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