Book 16  Provoking Contemplation.  Penn, C and Hudson, E. (2009) (Fig. 14).  Provoking Contemplation.  Unique collaborative artist’s book.  45 pages, mixed media, including drawing, painting, collage, sewing. 30cm x 42,5cm x 4cm.  Book 16. Collection: Cheryl Penn.

When Hudson showed me her work, the images that struck me most were Mandalas.  Mandalas are meditation circles.  Hudson wrote in her notes on the book, which I included as part of the work that  “the Western Mandala is for healing – an image for emergence from chaos and  darkness whilst the Eastern Mandala tends to wall out certain cosmic energies in an effort to create tranquility and non-attachment within”.  The term mandala originates in Sanskrit and it means a disc/circle,  “an intricate circular motif symbolizing the universe in Hinduism and Buddhism”  (Readers Digest Word Power Dictionary, 2004:587).

My use of the Mandala was intended to create a  meditative artwork around issues I was dealing with during the course of making this book.  The use of a circular format also had reference to the daily ‘round’, the mundane issues I was addressing as subject matter.  I also wondered if it were possible to respond to mandalas in some sort of reverse process; that is to say,  mandalas come about through meditation, so what would happen if I gave Hudson my illustrated meditations to meditate on?  I painted/drew/collaged a series of circle meditations  to which Hudson  could respond, either to the title, or the image.

During the making of this book I become conscious that I was using a lot of threads in my work, and realized that  threads  bind everything together in life, in nature, in death.  The more I worked, the more threads were added to my work on the Mandalas.  It was an interesting revelation that there are threads in most of my books.   The use of thread is also a contemporary reference to feminist craft practice, as a subversion of traditional male dominated art making, in the creation of a feminist aesthetic.