Sirish Rao and Gita Wolf

On Monday 1st April, Gita Wolf and Sirish Rao  were awarded the 2008 Bologna Ragazzi New Horizons Award   for the handmade book The Night Life of Trees. The Ragazzi awards are among the most prestigious international awards conferred each year in the world of children's book publishing.

The Night Life of Trees is an exquisite hand-bound and screen-printed book of paintings by three of the finest artists of the Gond tribal art tradition. The Gonds, a tribe of central India, are traditionally forest dwellers. They believe that trees are hard at work during the day providing shelter and nourishment to all. Only when night falls can they finally rest, and their spirits reveal themselves. These luminous spirits are captured in The Night Life of Trees, a fascinating and haunting foray into the Gond imagination. Each painting is accompanied by its own poetic tale, myth or lore, narrated by the artists , which recreate the familiarity and awe with which the Gond people view the natural world. Screen-printed by hand on black paper, every page of this book is an original print. Each book in this limited second edition of 1,000 is individually numbered.

Pictures form the Tara Exhibition

From To Market To Market

Sarah McIntyre sent this comment:

I wish I'd gone to the Tara talk, that publisher is coming out with some fascinating stuff. I've been really interested in some folk art from that region (well, next-door region in the lowlands of Nepal), from the Janakpur Women's Development Centre. It was started up by some chick from Harvard who wanted to help the local women make money from their paintings. They originally painted their houses, but she helped them transfer their skills to painting things on paper and other items they could sell. Really lovely stuff, I want to go out there on holiday some day and take a workshop from them if they'll let me. I love their flat colours, compositions and lack of western-style perspective drawing.

http://www.asianart.com/exhibitions/jwdc/index.html