Chandra Brooks

Francesca Pellanda

2011-12-03T06:16:00.000-08:00

I montaged photos of Francesca Pellanda by Ger Ger with light cuttings from my German & Arabic adaptations to create these:

Scene 1: The sins of the father revisited upon the son

2011-11-16T02:38:00.001-08:00

O Daedalus, Fly Away Home by Robert Hayden

Drifting night in the Georgia pines,
coonskin drum and jubilee banjo.
Pretty Malinda, dance with me.

Night is juba, night is congo.
Pretty Malinda, dance with me.

Night is an African juju man
weaving a wish and a weariness together
to make two wings.

O fly away home fly away

Do you remember Africa?

O cleave the air fly away home

My gran, he flew back to Africa,
just spread his arms and
flew away home.

Drifting night in the windy pines;
night is laughing, night is a longing.
Pretty Malinda, come to me.

Night is a mourning juju man
weaving a wish and a weariness together
to make two wings.

O fly away home fly away

The opening of The White Rat takes place in a cave/labyrinth which is full of hidden personal truths for me which is why the narrator speech includes this poem, video from the 10 days spent shooting at The Mushroom Cave Plantation

l'Espace du Belvédère

in Naveil France with ZODIAC

Jean-Marc Bihan-Faou, Chandra Brooks and Sacha Hladiy on Collegium TV Berlin, Germany

and is accompanied by Fredo Viola's Robinson Crusoe.
http://youtu.be/D4Oq1Vmd8aY

I once read in a Renaissance treatise on color theory I found at the Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam, that "Artists use color to hide their secrets" which is how I feel about my use of symbols and art that reflects my unique history and sensibilities. All of these cannot and should not be illuminated although one aspect of the task of the artist is to share and interpret the personal significance of enough of these to develop the audiences empathy and capacity for "stepping into one anothers' shoes" which means that I have to share some of why I use what I use to tell you a compelling story unique to me. Throughout history, artists have been outcasts on many social levels while society, the same society that was often calling us the worst sinners, was having us create it's masterpieces of illumination, religious chronicles and monuments as well as using our voices and bodies to give glory and praise to the Gods these same societies used to scorn us. This is the underlying motivation behind my use of illuminated manuscripts, shadows and light as the basis for my storytelling. It's a healing process for me that I want to remain mystical to the audience. I myself have had innumerable experiences of chastisement by religions beginning with being called "satanic" at church as a child for expressing, researching and finding it fascinating that Lucifer, was an angel and naively voicing that as this is biblical fact it must be true that we are all light and darkness so what harm is he or me? These pains have faded for me but they are still enough a part of my being to be an integral part of who I am and therefore a necessary inclusion.

Fredo Viola is for my sister Angel who has always looked for me, loved me, seen the light in me and cried for me. My Ariadne.

My willingness to keep trying.....

2011-03-07T06:21:00.000-08:00

can easily be conceived as "never getting things done" but it's neither true nor fair. In my life, there's been nothing worth doing that hasn't been worth doing well. Sometimes this means that something simple in your eyes is complicated and a decades labor in mine. It's taken me awhile but I have finally recognized that the reason my site's never done isn't the host of Pandora's evils one could throw on my character but a vision and sometimes vision takes awhile to be seen. Few along the way can see it building up gradually over time while others only notice when it's become a skyscraper.

Herbstferien Beyaz Fare Production (Die Weiße Ratte from Henri Pourrat's La Rate Blanche)

2010-10-01T00:44:00.000-07:00

BEYAZ FARE
(Die Weiße Ratte)
Ein Türkisches Märchen

"Help create a multi-media stage production of a traditional fairytale.
Explore film/video, papercraft and drama in this community-based project"

Helfen Sie dabei, ein traditionelles Märchen als multimediale Bühnenproduktion zu gestalten. Erleben Sie Einblicke in die Welt von Film, Video, Papierkunst und Theater in einem gemeinsamen Projekt.

Theaterproduktion: Kostenlose Workshops im Kiez

Herbstferien 11.10.2010-11.23.2010

Production Overview

This theatre project (mid-October 2010) is headed by American artist Chandra Brooks and is an interpretation of a medieval French fairytale, La Rate Blanche from the collection of Henri Pourrat. It forms part of her long-term project “The Universal Fairytale”, which involves 42 various language versions and handcrafted art in a range of different formats all for the purpose of creating intercultural dialogue through storytelling and media art. Beyaz Fare: Ein Türkisches Märchen is an opportunity for families of migrational backgrounds in the Oranienkiez & Mariannenkiez to look at their neighborhood through the eyes of the camera, theatre and book-arts and to give voice to that on stage and through the internet for an audience of their peers and neighbors. The process involves the use of paper-craft to create unique tapestries based on The Lady and the Unicorn (La Dame à la licorne) Tapestries.

Some further information is available online here: http://chandrabrooks.blogspot.com/2010/09/visit-from-berlin-mayor-klaus-wowereit.html or http://www.mediamatic.net/person/21994/en.

Herbstferien 11.10.2010-11.23.2010

The Beyaz Fare Turkish Theatre Production will take place this Herbstferien break in Berlin from October 11-23, 2010. This is a Turkish language production which will:
-be narrated alternately in Turkish and in German with the French book as a moving onscreen projection
-use digitally created book as the "sets" from my La Rate Blanche "medieval illuminated manuscript"

Illumination, lettering and mis-en-page by Chandra Brooks

-video material they create within the kiez to supplement the action on stage.
-the play brings the kiez into a new perspective with the participants as the observers of themselves as storybook beings in familiar places.

Based on The Lady and the Unicorn (La Dame à la licorne) Tapestries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_and_the_Unicorn

Note: don't take these combination too literally because how each of the five senses is attached to the elements of our faerie tale depends on how the participants plan to create them. I've simply arranged some examples.

click on the image to see a larger version

COSTUME & TEXTILE DESIGN WORKSHOP

Participants will create an ornamental medieval style textile by working with complex paper-cut motifs. The process involves the use of beeswax crayons, watercolor paint and ink (courtesy of http://www.stockmar.de/). These textiles will be used in our play as the cloth we will use to construct our set and costumes. The paper-cut motifs have been recreated as plexi-stencils for usability.

Kostüm- & Textildesign

Die Teilnehmer werden ornamentale, mittelalterliche Kostüme und Textilien herstellen, indem sie mit komplexen Scherenschnittmotiven arbeiten. Dabei kommen Bienenwachsmalstifte, Wasserfarben und Tinte zum Einsatz. Die Textilien werden im Theaterstück für das Bühnenbild verwendet.

Note: Please use your imagination along with these examples to get a feeling of what our textiles could possibly look like.

VIDEO & EDITING WORKSHOP

This group will be working with professional cameramen/women from http://www.filmarche.de/ to shoot video footage that represents the key elements of the fairytale from: the architecture, people and landscapes of the two participating kiez: Oranienkiez & Mariennenkiez. This group is also responsible for editing this local material into a digital book which will play as a projection during the performance.

Diese Teilnehmergruppe wird mit professionellen Kameraleuten Videosequenzen filmen, die die wesentlichen Elemente des Märchen widerspiegeln: Architektur, Menschen und Landschaften aus zwei Kiezen – Oranienkiez & Mariannenkiez Diese Gruppe wird zudem das Drehmaterial mitschneiden und daraus ein digitales Buch herstellen, das als Teil der Theaterproduktion gezeigt wird.

These are some examples from another productions which have brought certain castle interiors from Auvergne in France to the Frascati stage in Amsterdam....

DRAMA & PERFORMANCE WORKSHOPS

This group is the actors and performers who will be wearing the costumes and masks in your video and theatre play. Whatever your skill or talent for self-expression, please join us and create your part in The Universal Fairytale.

Die Darsteller dieser Teilnehmergruppe werden die Kostüme und Masken im Video und während der Bühnenaufführung tragen. Wo auch immer Ihre Talente liegen mögen, unterstützen sie die Produktion und kreieren Sie ihren persönlichen Beitrag.

FAERIES, RATS & MASKS WORKSHOP

No mythical kingdom would be complete without lots of faeries and masked creatures so to this effect please join us to create some faerie wings, masks and tails!

Zu einem mythischen Königreich gehören natürlich auch Feen und fabelhafte Wesen. Nehmen Sie teil an der Produktion und helfen Sie uns, Feenflügel, Masken und Rattenschwänze herzustellen.

A visit from Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit

2010-09-30T08:48:00.000-07:00

Türkischer Elternverein Summer 2010 Reception with Mayor Wowereit

The finale of the making of Beyaz Fare during the summer of 2010 was a visit by Mayor Wolverite. The kids were really excited and it made them feel really important to have him take the time to let Mehmet explain what we were doing and how. Photographer Miriam May documented the event and here are some of her images.

The Elements of Book Production

Throughout the summer we worked on the basics of book production. To give the kids a basic understanding of what happens when a book is made we started with the basics: the Turkish alphabet and drawing letters to create fonts. For The Universal Fairytale, I have created a theme on alphabets which combines to great moments in European manuscript history: when Charlemagne brought Alcuin of York to his court to create Carolingian Miniscule which effectively ended the church and state's hold on the dissemination of knowledge by creating an alphabet than any literate person can read. Our alphabets today owe a great deal to Carolingian Miniscule. The other area which influenced my creating fonts from hand-drawn alphabets was the work of legendary calligraphers at the moment in history when the printing press wiped out the making of hand-made manuscripts. I combine alphabets by Croatian calligrapher Georg Bocskay from Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta with Carolingian miniscule to create 3 fonts. I walk the children through this process by introducing real geometry through game play with tangrams and origami.

Visual Geometry, Fibonacci, Origami and The Art of Abstraction

By thinking about the geometry of organic forms such as plants and animals the path opens up to the idea of the geometry of a letter. This is all a part of understanding the basics of how abstractions are created.

What I love most about Fibonacci and golden section geometry is that it taught me how to see. One of the obstacles that I am enjoying chipping away at is that the kids I worked with this summer didn't have the internal dialogue necessary to apply geometry to objects to reason about what they were seeing. For example, one day Lioba asked a child to pass her "der Berg" (The Mountain) from Die Weiße Ratte to her and although the girl was working on a rubbing with der Berg's stencil she had no idea what Lioba was talking about.

That kind of misunderstanding is one of the things that I look forward to working on with the kids in the Turkish community because it's a total inconsistency. At the same moment, without instruction they managed to create some of the most complicated origami creations straight from the book. Most couldn't read/comprehend the instructions so they just went on the pictures. These kids come from a complicated, disciplined culture with lots of intricate nuances attached to sensory perception how else could "marbling" and a host of other advances in the field of aesthetics have come out of Turkish culture? The kids lack of abstract visual language is not a fault of their own.

The Universal Fairytale and Applied Bauhaus Technique for the 21st century

A few years ago I began developing storytelling kits on the premise of using technology to foster the development of handicraft. My work with calligraphy, bookmaking and handicraft is very complicated and skilled but to share the love of books and visual arts this all has to be simplified so that anyone can participate without the need of my skill level. I became a part of The FabLab, an MIT based project pilot through Mediamatic (in the basement of the Stedelijk Museum) where I used the laser-cutter and vinyl cutter (you may know it as a sticker-making machine) to create modified versions of my work that could be cut-out to make toy theatre boxes (diorama), silhouettes, rubbings, etc for the purpose of making books, theatre and to encourage storytelling. I think that it's better to offer the most beautiful and complicated material when encouraging lost art forms because anybody can make something with Photoshop and templates but a medieval French illuminated manuscript like the one I spent 2 years making is a bit more exciting and encouraging!

Rubbings

With only 6 weeks to create a book and experience some nice cultural events throughout Kreuzberg it was possible to create a simple variation on Die Weiße Ratte by using the stencils to create rubbings.

Fights & Major Disagreements amongst the kids

From the start of this project I had meant to go visit some mosques and get a better idea about Islam because growing up in a Christian household didn't teach me much about the other Abrahamic faiths so I am ignorant. I wish I had gone from the start but it was only after a major fight happened between the kids.

The women of the Khadija Mosque in Heimersdorf, Berlin took me in and explained some things about the different sects of Islam and that there are more than 70 sects so there are many disagreements. Some children are raised that you can't touch a pig,not even in a petting zoo and others are raised that prohibitions against alcohol and wearing headscarves are not Qur'anic. I'll go back, it was a lovely, peaceful place and they all speak English! I can even accept the children laughing at me as a fumbled through washing my feet in all my layers of clothing:-)

The anger and frustration at being insulted in and outside of the Turkish community is valid-no one likes being disrespected or having their feelings hurt but it' s double blow when a girl of 20 is beating up a boy of 16 outside the Gorlitzer Park for insulting her mother and a Black-American with dred-locks and painted covered clothes after a workshop at Schlesisches 27.

BEYAZ FARE the final book

We tried to translate the text from German into Turkish with a group of retired women who meet at Mosaik-Jugendkulturetage e.V.because there is a group of retired women who meet there twice a week to drink tea, sew and gossip. The first time we met with them the kids loved it, the second time one of the girls wanted to leave quickly although she had wanted to go there more than the others. It didn't make sense. After a bit, someone translated that although the old ladies were totally hanging out and none wore headscarves, they were gossiping viciously about how she at 12 wasn't properly dressed. It sooooo reminds me of my own experiences growing up in the Black community in Missouri. At school I was brutally amused and maimed and called everything but the name on my passport and in the solace of church I was ridiculed for being different or because people had nothing better to do. We left and managed it through people at the TEV.

After the kids finished their rubbings I integrated them into the light cutting that they had done rubbings from my Die Weiße Ratte German adaptation of Henri Pourrat's La Rate Blanche.

The aesthetic of the final book has elements in common with the work of Lotte Reiniger and Eric Carle.

Enjoy the book!

Coloring Book Test 1

2010-09-24T01:33:00.001-07:00

Once or twice a week there will be a coloring book download from The Universal Fairytale's Opensource Database which gives one of 13 pages in whatever language I feel like issuing. This isn't a page, it's just an initial step towards those pages. I know that traditionally coloring books have lines that make total sense and are absolutely separate but I played around in Illustrator until I managed to create some "maze-like" effects which could trouble you if you color like a zombie so be prepared to do a little thinking before you begin!

Sketchbook

2010-09-15T14:17:00.000-07:00

Lately, all my time is about planning. Very careful, all-consuming plans. Even for that I don't have the time to make drawings so I've come to appreciate planning meetings because if I'm lucky (and I have been this week) afterwards I get to make sketches. They're my notes so I won't bother explaining cause I understand them.

Plakat OBSTBAUME

2010-09-02T07:33:00.000-07:00

Sparring

2010-07-26T06:35:00.001-07:00

I was sitting with Hattice and Helen and talking about the business side of the arts. Hattice told a story of an upcoming and talented musician mentioned to someone worthy of mentioning in the field of publicity. The only question asked was,"is he good-looking"? I'm not willing to totally dance that dance but I will support, "I'd love to meet her to see if she's as good-looking as she seems here"!

Is this what you wanted Denise?

2010-07-26T03:28:00.000-07:00

www.bebitalia.it/
http://www.bebitalia.it/#
http://www.bebitalia.it/#DESIGNER_5_141_0_1
www.satyendra-pakhale.com

Finissage

2010-05-26T13:33:00.000-07:00

Studies for work on canvas

2010-05-26T10:03:00.000-07:00

Study for a detail that will be rubbed onto canvas and stenciled with ink from linoleum. Playing with elements from institutional Germany such as the green paper from a gradeschool, Olympic symbols from the Olympic Stadium I noticed while watching football (surprised I like it?) and Bauhaus principles for Die Weiße Ratte

Mrs. Willards rug belongs on the wall and so does dinner....

2010-05-26T09:04:00.000-07:00

The idea of being a mother and only a mother is a noble one. Motherhood and having a relationship is another thought. Motherhood, relationship and competitive profession is what I'm thinking about today. Whenever I am busy things fall apart around the house at which point people get a bit "touchy" about that. I have all kinds of things to do and being annoyed at my no being housewife material makes me want to run away from the Neanderthals (move some letters around and what do you get aged 13 & 16). I just want to scream! At my best, I am sad excuse for a housekeeper although I like that my father once lovingly said that, "Angel's house is filthy but Chandra's is a scattered mess that you can eat off the floor of"! I can make any surrounding warm and beautiful but I can't also pick up the papers and put all my work stuff away, fold the laundry, pay attention to everyone, develop my work, work, etc.!!! That's too much for me and I don't even idealize it. I like that Angel eats well, exercises, develops her mind and her children's and doesn't make an issue out of housework.

This morning I got up and after going for a longer run than my time allowed, I hung out in the kitchen. With the attitudes I've been getting because of the house mess (from my new stuff) I hesitated to cook or do anything nice for anyone not there to participate in the work and then complain about the mess later. I could've just cooked but I decided that I needed to go one step further and have the moment here acknowleged so I took my precious time and made arrangements and took some photos then took even more time find the passage from The Bell Jar which I'd like the people I live with to think a lot about because what I do with my hands is so special and anyone should realize it's all a work of art but they don't so............

" I tried to imagine what it would be like if Constantin were my husband.

It would mean getting up at seven and cooking him eggs and bacon and toast and coffee and dawdling about in my nightgown and curlers after he’d left for work to wash up the dirty plates and make the bed, and then when he came home after a lively, fascinating day he’d expect a big dinner, and I’d spend the evening washing up even more dirty plates till I fell into bed, utterly exhausted.

This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A’s, but I knew that’s what marriage was like, because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard’s mother did from morning till night, and she was the wife of a university professor and had been a private school teacher herself.

Once when I visited Buddy I found Mrs. Willard braiding a rug out of strips of wool from Mr. Willard’s old suits. She’d spent weeks on that rug, and I had admired the tweedy browns and greens and blues patterning the braid, but after Mrs. Willard was through, instead of hanging the rug on the wall the way I would have done, she put it down in place of her kitchen mat, and in a few days it was soiled and dull and indistinguishable from any mat you could buy for under a dollar in the five and ten.

And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard’s kitchen mat

Hadn’t my own mother told me that as soon as she and my father left Reno on their honeymoon—my father had been married before, so he needed a divorce—my father said to her, “Whew, that’s a relief, now we can stop pretending and be ourselves"?—and from that day on my mother never had a minute’s peace.

I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn’t want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitaria n state."

Dear Denise,,,,

2010-05-26T08:45:00.000-07:00

Thanks for calling this morning-it's always enlightening! I think that these two animations don't show up as GIF files here so I'll email them to you. I'm at a friends since our internet isn't working and plan to be online at least an hour so I can get some things done and answer you back if you write me while I'm still online. Some of these aren't what you asked for, they were reminders to me that I have to look at my notes to find but I know you know how to ignore what isn't necessary from me.

My number 1 fan!

2010-05-13T08:47:00.001-07:00

She comes by sometimes when her parents are busy working. When they work and her sister isn't there she spends the day eating my chocolate and being my Thai Princess. We have a basic understanding: we play and she works with my stencils until somebody picks her up to go home. Last Saturday we had more visitors so she had to actually finish a drawing and here it is!

Back to The Arabic Book of Shadows

2010-05-13T08:31:00.000-07:00

When Miriam created the images that I "mastered" to work with the Arabic text I loved her work but found it really "foreign" to my way of thinking because for me, these are only about shadows and rubbings and so her coming back with sculptural forms meant that she truly interpreted my work. When she and I began our collaboration I had no idea what she did because in fact, I gave no instructions because what fun is it to only get what I can perceive in advance. Working with light from negative space is my form but there are so many possibilities. I decided that I have to take her work and cut it so that I can find sculptural light spaces but in the meanwhile I've decided to play with my own work as she would. These images are about the beginning of that process. The light cutting I am working with here is rather delicate because I was dumb enough to make those two spray-painted pieces from it and after paper has been cut on this level it really doesn't deserve paint. It's more fragile than ever so I didn't overwork it because I hope to try this with Cagdas and some Kodachrome slide film soon.

Zodiac

2010-05-10T10:44:00.001-07:00

The final test........

Jean-Marc Bihan Faou, Chandra Brooks & Sacha Hladiy on Collegium TV, Berlin
photographed by Solomon Lawrence

Zodiac on the Collegium

2010-05-10T07:43:00.000-07:00

I'm formatting images for my website and I sometimes wonder if I have them right. This was from "The Book of Shadows" Here I can test if Jean-Marc is looking as beautiful as he is......

Jean-Marc Bihan-Faou photographed on set by Solomon Lawrence at The Collegium in Berlin

The universal nature of graffiti

2010-05-08T05:46:00.000-07:00

These are attempts I made at using spray paint with the light cuttings from the Arabic book. I'll never do that again to paper I have worked that hard on but it's an interesting idea to pursue if I can convince myself to cut linoleum-which I can't. Here are some details..........

Continuing on at Carre

2010-05-08T04:54:00.001-07:00

Last week the gallery got a new look and a name which I will not disclose of yet as it hasn't made it onto the building! Die Weiße Ratte will also continue until the 29th of May with new hours which I'll post after I put them on the door. There have been some additions as well as a spruced up arrangement. I hope to see you there!

Some forgotten tiles

2010-05-04T14:04:00.001-07:00

There are many realities within any given piece which is evident when you see that what began as a fairy....

becomes a tile related to a story that no one even remembers....

Denise................

2010-04-29T20:44:00.000-07:00

For some reason, the last folder I tried to make in the control panel wouldn't go in the website's folder so after trying a few minutes which is too much for me this morning, I will just put the final ones here so you know what's important out of that bunch of "ideas" in the "design" folder.

I'll be online after I get some sleep,
Chandra

Mr. Ubuage said to "praise the unorganized student for bringing pencil and paper to class.......

2010-04-28T05:57:00.000-07:00

I've been struggling like crazy with this website thing because it's not for nothing that the above was said of my son! I've never placed any value on organizing my data files beyond the basic idea of SAVE. I have terrible habits and they've grown as the work has grown. I have millions of images and they are all "specially" organized. Now that I'm actually working with someone who can structure me, I'm struggling to create a semblance of order which is beyond me when it's not about dots or lines or shadows. I also have to make the design look good which I wasn't overly concerned with until after I met with Denise for the first time. She made it all sound so simple,"just get me the page design and thumbnails so I can start writing the html. Make two folders for thumbnails and label each 1 and 2" and it all seemed so clear and simple when her butterfly wings were filling the air with this. I've had 3 horribly stressful days trying to do this. I thought I had all this stuff organized until confronted with it taking up someone else's professional time. Now I'm seeing all the mistakes I didn't notice before and having to puzzle them out in an elegant fashion the supports the representation of my work. AAAAARRRGGGH!!!!

old, forgotten things......

2010-04-21T10:19:00.000-07:00

What's tough about dealing with life is that everybody understands why I'm stressed when the ordeal is on but just like television news, once the events have passed and only memory carries the scar there is no one there but me to see what's inside my head. I even forget why certain things go this way or that because after the adrenaline has faded my mind plays tricks on me.......

My husband and I had split up July the 4th a long time ago. We went our separate ways and he went to Europe for a year during which I received an invitation to work in the Arctic Circle at the Icehotel which I really wanted so I had to meet up with him for practical reasons. Following this moment, I started making art to work through some of the unsaid reasons for ending it so definitively. During the rare moments in New York when I had the time and inclination to think about art I was watching Peter Greenaway's "Prospero's Books" and there was a scene with amazing architecture so I started making collage to represent this architecture. I don't really care for collage but with regards to my ideas of working with negative space, there are a lot of possibilities there if it's only used as a palette so I did. I don't have those pieces here and wonder, considering how the break-up went, if I'll ever see those first pieces again-pity!

Animating Shadows

2010-04-12T06:35:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25SP4ftxklg

The German book is based after the work of Lotte Reiniger who created the first silhouette animation in 1908. She gets little recognition although her work was amazingly inspired. When I first started working with the light cutting Frank, "the librarian" gave me a copy of her Prince Achmed from the 1001 Arabian Nights because I wanted to do some kind of animation with my light cutting shadows. This is one of those visual things that it's hard to put words to so the image I am adding from a study for my German animation project probably does little to explain how I use rubbings to create the negative space within the shadows....

Effigy + Chinese Taipei

2010-04-12T04:11:00.000-07:00

The oldest funeral effigy in Westminster Abbey is that of Edward II which I came across while researching famous illuminated manuscripts in the UK. I got sidetracked and wound up reading something about Edward II who I knew nothing about beyond patchy details that don't go much beyond gowns, wallpaper and other random bits. The 14th century looked great so I kept reading. I liked Edward II for having been the first to establish colleges at Oxford and Cambridge and wasted more than a day in the library reading about him. When you add up all the days spent on tangents you can understand how this project has taken 6 years, but the tangents are always fruitful and their pursuit is what give the project depth. At the back of a book on Edward II I saw his effigy and thought this would be a brilliant way of cutting out my King and Queen! From there, I did some research on Chinese Taipei rubbings and began producing rubbings such as these from the marriage of these two styles.

"what hurts instructs"

2010-04-09T05:04:00.001-07:00

About an hour and a half go I started out with the ambition of resizing all the wobbly images on my blog. I have to size them for my website anyhow so I thought it wouldn't be such a big deal. In the end, I have re-sized a few dozen images but I'm sick of going through this tedious process of editing old blogs. I've learned my lesson but I refuse to write, "I will always know what I'm doing when I begin" a thousand times. We become machines if we let such things truly control us. With my last half hour before I hit the world, I wanna organize myself to work so I can bring what I need to paint these missing miniatures from the Illuminated Manuscript. I'm tired of staring at a screen!

Carre this evening

2010-04-08T16:02:00.000-07:00

I'm glad I went today because there was this woman who appeared out of my peripheral vision. It took her awhile to come inside. She stood outside the glass looking at some of the Arabic motifs for awhile then she read the other door, and the inner door and swooped over to the ornaments again. She had a way about her. One day, after I have some time to really think about all she said, I will write about it. It began with her saying that she is the white rat and I made it about her. I can't imagine anyone else being able to say what she said and have it taken so seriously. I've never experienced anyone understanding every single reason for why I do this. It was like talking to myself. It was a magical moment. I didn't want anyone else to come in after that because this felt so perfect. Others came and this still felt perfect.

Shadow Tests

2010-04-08T15:21:00.000-07:00

I'm not much of a photographer yet but I did do some tests from these that get me closer to getting what I want out of them. These are all pretty rough but that's good enough for now.

FYI: The King and The Queen

2010-04-08T15:10:00.000-07:00

Just in case you are wondering what I mean about the PROGRESS!

Progress

2010-04-08T14:19:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, when I cut the now defunct King and Queen from the German adaptation, it took more than a year of attempts followed by one enormous piece (1 meter x 1,5 meters and that was a great feat at the time. When I look back on that now and how unhappy I have always been with it, I feel pretty good about cutting 3 A1 ornamental frames in much finer detail than that piece. I still have to manage installing them and producing light and shadows but for now I will be happy that I can draw and cut these to my satisfaction.

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The Kingdom on the other side of the world from The White Rat

2010-04-05T12:05:00.001-07:00

This is the 7th section of The White Rat polyptych. I have begun to draw The King and The Queen and am happy to have waited so long on them because my style softens with time which will work well for animation-hopefully!

Life in Berlin Carre: part 1

2010-04-05T07:02:00.000-07:00

I wish that everything just worked out perfectly from the beginning. There is so much to be done after seeing how things went. I must be an idiot for having scheduled an opening at the beginning of the holiday! When I went in Saturday it was the first time that I saw how challenging it is to show work in a space which isn't known or really designated as an exhibition space. A lot of people trek through Berlin Carre but most probably don't even know the name of the place as they pass through. Those that know where they are just burrow through blindly ignoring everything around them so as to not experience visual contamination. Some of the people who are familiar and accepting of the place are at odds with the idea of "art" so they conveniently view the exhibition from the safe distance the glass front affords them. I sat there entertaining the florists daughters with my broken German while watching hundreds of people barrel by. Inside my head I tried to telepathically communicate this simple message to the tens of thousands of people wandering around Alexanderplatz "please guess that there is a gallery inside and come see my work"!

Julia Margaret Cameron's The Mountain Nymph

2010-03-29T07:54:00.000-07:00

There are so many ways of interpreting the elements of the story....I'd love to find the right photographer to create characters like these:

The poster for my temporary shop

2010-03-27T05:53:00.001-07:00

The King (First Attempt)

2010-03-26T01:01:00.000-07:00

I did learn something from that trial page attempt but I didn't learn enough! I cut this yesterday in the sunshine so I was happy while working but that wasn't good enough, was it? I will have to give some serious thought to coming up with the right geometric pattern to work with or try something reminiscent of Ottoman calligraphy......

Arabic Title Page Reject 1

2010-03-21T12:45:00.000-07:00

With the amount of time that this took to create, I am hoping that I don't get into "Arabic Title Page Reject 11" like I did with the frames for La Rate Blanche. Working with pattern and Arabic is turning out to be more complicated than expected because I didn't actually "expect" from the start. This took a day and a half to cut and my handwork was inferior throughout. I am wondering if I should make another frame motif 2 modification or if I should actually use the base design motif from La Rate Blanche since it's origins are from Arabic manuscripts? It's also possible that I might just use simple geometric patterning better than motif in this instance? We will just have to wait and see!

Enjoying the process through letting go of the end result.....

2010-03-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

I had been kind of rigid about how the pages of Pourrat's manuscript should be illuminated. I had the same issue with the aniconic version. I had to come to the realization that I don't always have to follow certain images in my head to their full execution because often these are simply stages of the process. There are so many images that will never be used in the manuscripts that I can create pages like this.

METALLIC SUN

2010-03-04T12:11:00.000-08:00

Last thought of the day.......

the production of wallpaper

2010-03-04T02:23:00.000-08:00

These 3 wallpaper designs are based on a pattern that was created through a 3-fold process: the ornamental frame I painted for "Le Soleil" from La Rate Blanche was multiplied 40+times to create the background, then I blew up the painting of the sun in the center of the illustration box from the frame until it covered a huge space. I varied the difference, multiplied, etc. and then you get this from throwing my signature painting in Sanskrit on the top of it all. This is the third variation which is meant to cover an entire wall.

The worth of objects......

2010-03-02T05:14:00.001-08:00

It's always difficult to think in terms of the financial worth of an object made by my hands. I can't say that I think about money first and then "get creative", that has never worked for me. I've been playing around with wallpapers for awhile but decided to do something serious and "commercial" with them now. Tomorrow I have a meeting about how to go about this so today I am going through hundreds of design files.......

The Year of the Wallpaper

2010-03-01T15:03:00.001-08:00

notes for game layout

2010-02-12T04:51:00.000-08:00

This same transformation from the French pages but as an interactive book.

The emotional content of a "letter"

2010-02-12T03:54:00.001-08:00

What can you say with the letter "p"?

Can you say that a princess has refused the sun?

French Folio: page 6

2010-02-12T01:16:00.000-08:00

text from Henri Pourrat's 'La Rate Blanche'
calligraphy painted by Chandra Brooks & Marianne Heemskerk-Roeleveld
frame, ornaments & illustration drawn & painted by Chandra Brooks
page layout by Chandra Brooks

The people of the kingdom were muttering amongst themselves because ordinarily The Queen of the Faeries would chasten a mad king by changing an ignomonious noble prodigy into a blue bird or some such creature!

French Folio: page 5

2010-02-12T01:14:00.000-08:00

Despite The Queen of the Faeries disapprobation, she was finally compelled upon to uphold the obligations which exist amongst nobility by agreeing to their request.

French Folio: page 4

2010-02-11T23:48:00.000-08:00

There came a day when the image of a princess was so strong upon their white rat that The King and Queen journeyed to the realm of The Queen of the Faeries to bid she make a true princess of their white rat.

The Cloud!

2010-02-04T05:15:00.000-08:00

I'm kind of excited about "The Cloud" King because he has been rather difficult to get my head around.

The Sun and The Wind

2010-02-03T11:43:00.001-08:00

The Mountain

2010-02-03T09:32:00.001-08:00

I took these from one of The Queen's cuffs which has been Photoshoped, filtered and played with to see if I can create a Mountain King with the character of a troll despite the need of it's being abstract..........I like the idea of the mountain troll as the embodiment of the Mountain King which is best described in one of those Terry Pratchett books Bela always has me reading. He describes the chagrin of the mountain troll being awakened by someone lighting a fire not realizing that's his nostril hair. Then he shakes and erupts.....

Dear Georgi.......

2010-02-03T03:22:00.000-08:00

Thanks for the compliments about my work! If you go to the beginning of my blog, which isn't so long ago, you will see the drawings that some of the pieces that you like are based upon and the Koran where I got these motifs. The purpose is to produce a version of The Universal Fairytale that Muslims who don't believe in representational images can have in their homes. For the project to truly represent the world, it has to show respect for individuality, cultural and religious differences. Some people have said that it's too difficult to create an illustration project that can only be abstract because it is too restrictive but for me, I feel more creative and inspired working this way than with the French and English manuscripts. I guess that this is partially because all I can do is imagine here and since I cannot speak, read or understand Arabic it holds me in awe. My respect for the culture of Islam is also growing because these pages from the Koran I am borrowing motifs from must have taken years and a full studio full of assistants and cutting edge equipment to produce as well as lots of gold yet some pages with the most extraordinary decoration contain only one word. The other thing I'm really getting into is how endless the possibilities are: when you look at the sculptural forms Miriam May photographed for me, you see the possibilities are endless! For me and my love of working with cut paper I haven't found a better outlet than this way of working.

one more princess

2010-02-02T08:26:00.001-08:00

other princess modes

2010-02-02T08:19:00.001-08:00

The Princess goes through a range of emotions which include: a spoiled brat, anger, disappointment, begging.....

This evening I am making Princess and wondering what to do to create "the white rat" and also thinking I have to stop this "creative" break.....

2010-02-02T06:25:00.000-08:00

Sun to Cloud transition from The White Rat

2010-01-29T06:41:00.000-08:00

The King tells The Princess that the most powerful being in the world is The Sun but she disagrees...

Clouds

2010-01-28T06:04:00.000-08:00

The light cuttings are by me. The cloud photo I use in the mask is by frank Verbeek. The cloud shadow I used to create this mask was taken by Odi Bussman at het Fijnhout Theatre in Amsterdam.

Today I am half a border and inlay further!

2010-01-28T03:59:00.000-08:00

I have tried putting it together by cutting a quadrant and duplicating it 4 times in Photoshop rather than going about it this way- the painstaking route where I cut all 4 quadrants, scan each one and then put it together in Photoshop to see if I like it. By next week I will then be able to see what a "classical" variation will look like.

studies for the paper burka II

2010-01-26T07:21:00.001-08:00

For me, it's too much like a traditional textile. I have to really think about the difference between removing the negative space from study I and removing the object as in this one. This doesn't feel like paper to me and I want the garment to feel like paper, I think. Back to the cutting board!

studies for the paper burka I

2010-01-26T07:17:00.000-08:00

I did this last night and left it "in progress" because I already see what I want out of it. I prefer it over what I did today.

The White Rat

2010-01-26T02:48:00.001-08:00

The Queen

2010-01-26T02:01:00.001-08:00

Although these images don't contain any figurative or representational aspects they can be full of emotion. Here you see the emotions which correspond to the events in the story beginning with our introduction to The Queen and continuing on to what she feels each time she has to beg The Faerie Queen. If you take a look at the four images of The King you may or may not be able to see how they relate to one another.

These ornaments are the ones you've seen earlier in the blog but they were photographed by Miriam May. When I handed them over to her I told her to do whatever she wanted, however she wanted. She took these on a background of a rubbing I made from other ornaments. I think it's a lot more interesting to work with a photographer when they are allowed to use themselves as they choose. The work comes to life when minds meet.

Changing emotions aniconically (if that can be said)

2010-01-26T01:41:00.000-08:00

In the tale, we witness The King in all his glory and states of being. When he is married to his queen and all is well he is majestic as seen in the previous post. As disappointments mount and he experiences trials and tribulations we see these......

Restrictions and Limitations as the basis for creative freedom

2010-01-26T01:32:00.000-08:00

Light Cutting by Chandra Brooks
Photographed by Miriam May (Berlin, 2009)

There is much debate amongst scholars as to whether Islamic Art should or should not contain representative images. I'm not a scholar, I just read, talk to people and observe things. Ultimately, observation and conversation led me to believe that The Arabic Adaptation for a Muslim Audience would be better received if it does not contain representational images so I am working with abstractions created from ornaments from Sultan Baybars Qur'an because (in theory) I can't go wrong with ornaments found in a medieval Qur'an?

From Drawing to Cutting

2010-01-26T01:26:00.000-08:00

Although my cutting never look like the drawings I often spend days outlining to cut, the amount of reduction and variation that has taken this "L" ornament from Baybars to drawing to cuttings is more than I expected. I am pleased with the outcome although it means back to the drawing board because I want to create drawings that work for cutting not only to please my aesthetic wishes for my drawings. Although I'm not following my own guide lines I need the decorative aspect of my lines to vary away from them. Ultimately, creating these light-cuttings is the process from going from Baybars to my hand where the interaction between blade and eye create this.

Simplified Frame Drawing

2010-01-26T01:17:00.000-08:00

I haven't made final designs for the page layout of the Arabic book but the motifs in Sultan Baybars Qur'an are so complicated that I have been dealing with the challenge of how to replicate them which is what this drawing is about, "how to think in fractals and get them on paper gracefully by using more grids than Dürer"

You have to start somewhere or you're nowhere at all...

2010-01-26T00:40:00.000-08:00

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/quran/accessible/page2lge.html

My fairy godmother gives such poignant advise that it seems like a lot until I break it down to follow which is why I am now blogging at her suggestion months ago. Sometimes the simplest advise is the hardest to follow and maybe that's why simplicity is often so beautiful. Last night I came to a point with my paper burka where I realized that I was no longer in the dream phase but actualizing and I went to bed thinking, "I will have to blog this". I've worked with these motifs for about two years and we have been through several stages. Yesterday the textile design took shape so I'm gonna start the journey into my work from the middle. I am creating new media for the Arabic version of the fairytale with motifs from Sultan Baybars Qur'an.