Contemporary Drawing and Ceramics

Drawing Collection - Meditative Mapping

This drawing collection grew from our class experiments, I became fascinated with using different materials to make marks. The experiments that I most enjoyed were the tea dyeing, I loved the soft color that stained the paper. This made me experiment with different teas to see what colors I could get. Other experiments I did at home included Marbling which is a method of creating a design or painting using the surface of the water. This is native to a few different cultures, but growing up in Turkey and being half Turkish I experienced this art frequently. Marbling is something that always inspired me and something I wanted to learn more about, especially the techniques and even the history of it. After doing much research I discovered that people do marbling in thousands of different ways and using different chemicals and materials. Some use only ink on water while others use a long list of chemicals and special inks to create their designs. I tried this marbling technique in different ways using different materials some of them included: ink, spray paint, nail polish, acrylics , shaving cream and ink, and many others. My favorite technique was the simplest and this was ink on water which is a Japanese technique known as Suminagashi. This technique was extremely calming and meditative to me. I am someone who likes to be in control of what I'm doing and especially in control of my work, this technique of marbling did not allow for that, everytime I started my process it ended up being completely different. This was a good learning experience for me about taking chances and letting my work do what it wants to do.

http://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/in-circulation/2014/playing-with-paper
http://suminagashi.com
http://www.turkishculture.org/traditional-arts/marbling-113.htm