Threads of Awakening

Hi everyone! Did you notice the new box to your right? I’ve got an offer for you. Ever want to get a closer look at the layers of silk that make up a fabric thangka? Want to search for the stitches? Or just want to ooh and ahh? Starting next Monday, you’ll get a close-up [...]

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I have been teaching fabric thangka making through email for several months now. My first student was a woman named Louise, whose passionate questioning gave me the kick start I needed to package my skills into lessons. She came to visit me last summer for a brief introduction and has been working diligently with my [...]

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Works of art can be powerful vehicles for facilitating and celebrating change. Just as funerary arts are often associated with rebirth and renewal, most artistic genres are in a state of constant reformulation, reflecting ever-changing social circumstances and the dynamic nature of tradition. …arenas of contemporary artistic expression and practice are continuations of and departures [...]

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Writing on the textile side of life today. Yesterday, I went out to get some materials to make the quilted borders for my latest project, a deity-less thangka commissioned by Sharon Gould in Milan (see photo above). For those of you who may remember, this is where the clouds I posted on Facebook a few [...]

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Today was my first free day to leave Milan in over a month, and what fun I had with it! I took the train to Lugano. Only an hour away, but I felt like a traveler again. Something about trains makes me feel free and adventurous. Lugano is always a pleasant experience. Only an hour [...]

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Endangered Tibetan art form blossoms in Italy Wed Dec 17, 2008 9:42am EST By Barbara Cornell MILAN (Reuters Life!) – She left for Dharamsala, India, as an economic and community development volunteer and emerged nearly nine years later as master of a rare Tibetan art form, the fabric Thangka. Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo painstakingly transforms horse hair, [...]

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Documentary explores the fabrics of spirituality by Chris Martell, Wisconsin State Journal, Oct 4, 2008 Madison, WI (USA) — Threads of both time and spirituality are what Isadora Gabrielle Leidenfrost weaves together in her one-of-a-kind career. In addition to being a Ph.D. student at UW-Madison, she is a documentary filmmaker, and a historian who studies [...]

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Okay, this may be old news for many of you — since apparently Faith Ringgold started painting her own version of “thangkas” in 1972 after visiting an exhibition of Tibetan art at a museum in Amsterdam — but I just found out. Thanks to my Google alert for “Tibetan art,” I learned something new a [...]

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I’ve been slow. Summer in Milan can have that effect as routines break down and everyone leaves for vacation. I actually finished my Chenrezig art quilt/thangka two weeks ago. Here it is: This “thangka” is a unique combination of traditional and new, eastern and western techniques. I drew the figure of Chenrezig (that’s his Tibetan [...]

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Today I stitched some pieces of what will become the background for my Chenrezig. I’m very excited about this piece and don’t know whether to call it a thangka, a quilt, or something else. The figure is purely traditional. I used the traditional piecing and applique techniques I was trained in by Tibetan masters in [...]

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