Inspired by the past

In 2005 I was one of many artists invited to take part in an exhibition called "Inspired by the past." The work each artist exhibited had to have been inspired by artifacts from the University of Cambridge Museum of Archeology and Anthropology department. It was an exciting time and I was able to develop many ideas while looking at the Ritual art of the Ilatmul tribe of Papua New Guinea. There were sculptures, masks and lots of interesting facts about this tribe and it linked in beautifully with my own areas of interest. I set about printing and experimenting coming up with lots of exciting results, so many in fact that I filled a sketch pad with ideas. The page below shows an example.

I looked at the ritual of scarification and the masks which were worn during those ceremonies and I was able to extract quite a lot of information and ideas. So, this week after flicking through my old sketch book I revisited this topic and have been playing around with a design from a sketch of an Awan mask.

The design which I am going to use is developed from the mask above with some of the areas and shapes repeated, as you can see from the design the strong outlines and simple shapes lend themselves well to block printing so, I have made a block

and I will be printing this design onto space dyed cotton, I have used oil sticks to break up the background before I put the print onto it. My only concern at present is that the fabric which I have chosen is a very fine cotton and I will probably have to bond it onto another firmer fabric to get the best results but I am feeling hopeful that it will develop into an interesting project. I have not abandoned the Masai girl in green, I will work on them both.