Book Studio

In 1st Semester 2006, the School of Art Painting Workshop hosted Hossein Valamanesh as an Artist in Residence. During his residency he wanted to work with large pieces of unleavened bread and sought a way of flattening his bread under weights. Somehow his search led him to the Book Studio, and our large drying cabinet. Over the next month or so Hossein became an informal but regular visitor to the Studio, trying different ways to dry, flatten and then mount the pieces so that they could be framed without falling apart.

Hossein used the bread as a canvas to paint with pure saffron mixed to an ‘ink’ with water. He painted very elaborate Sufi calligraphy, spelling the word ‘love’ over and over. When I questioned this, he replied ‘Bread and Love — everybody needs it, every day’. Some of the bread pieces worked, others fell apart, which instigated a whole other way of looking at the work, and will lead to ongoing explorations. Towards the end of his stay, we ate a few pieces of the fragments, and the taste of the pure saffron was such a wonderful experience that he used a number of the pieces as an ‘eat your art out’ feature of his farewell party.

Hossein enjoyed the Book Studio so much that he used the letterpress equipment to produce a small edition called ‘In Praise of the Beloved’, which had two almonds in their shells adorned with fake eyelashes attached to the paper with the title printed underneath in handset letterpress. Deceptively simple, and very beautiful, like so much of his work.

(top image: Hossein at work with saffron while John Pratt prints in the background. Bottom image: bread in progress.)

This entry was posted on August 2, 2006 at 3:28 pm and is filed under Art Feature, Visiting Artists.