Jabbar and Adam Khatri carefully place a block on a new masterpiece.

Friday September 13th was the Five Artisans Exhibition at Maiwa East. The exhibition was up for one night only. On display were recently created masterworks by all five artisans: Ajrakh block printers Jabbar and Adam Khatri, weaver by Shamji Vishram Vankar and bandhani tied resist by Jabbar and Abdullah Khatri. In addition to the display of masterworks there were demonstrations in the techniques used by all the craftspeople present.

Shamji Vishram Vankar demonstrates weaving technique on the custom built portable looms that arrived for his workshop.

Jabbar and Abdullah Khatri introduce a bandhani piece before removing the resist threads.

On September 20th Maiwa East's gallery space was animated with the sound of a flying shuttle. On exhibit was a new selection of weavings, displayed as artworks. At the loom was Amy Putansu herself, weaving and explaining what she was doing. Amy is especially well known for the ondulé technique whereby the weaver is able to transcend the rigid grid of the woven structure.

The event was introduced by Tim McLaughlin

A wave is a beautiful emblem of how graceful nature is — why break it? 

In fluid dynamics, a breaking wave is a wave whose amplitude reaches a critical level. 
Beyond this level the graceful sinuous form of the wave is transformed into turbulence. At this point, simple models that describe wave dynamics often become invalid, particularly those that assume linear behaviour.

I can’t say how happy I was to run across this definition of a braking wave. Because the “linear behaviour” that can no longer be explained fits perfectly into a weaving analogy. 
We all know how a wave breaks on the shoreline, how it overreaches itself, balancing for a moment against gravity.  

I encourage you to think of these weavings as what happens when you leave linearity behind. These are powerfully subtle works - deceptive in their simplicity. In each one you will find a weaver and her childhood growing up by the ocean. If you look deep enough you will find the emotions gathered while far from water, and a longing to return to a woven rhythms as old as life itself. 

Amy's exhibition ran September 20 to 23rd.

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