'Hanji - from paper to purpose' exhibition, etc ......

2015 is shaping up to be one of my most exciting Hanji years yet.

I'll be holding a Hanji exhibition here in Adelaide entitled 'Hanji - from paper to purpose', from April 3rd to 26th at Mrs Harris' Shop Gallery in Torrensville, just 10 mins from the city of Adelaide.

This means a lot of work between now and then as I look forward to making some new pieces of Hanji, including a new photographic collection as well as a Traditional Korean and a modern collection. I will not only display and have for sale pieces of my Hanji but also, I'll be explaining what Hanji is all about with posters and pictures of paper making, along with hands on demonstrations and an audio visual display.

As far as I'm aware this is a first for Adelaide and I look forward to including the Korean community in this event.

After the exhibition I'll be heading to South Korea to attend the Jeonju Hanji Culture festival which is expected to take place on the first weekend in May. I visited this Festival in 2002 when I was living there and I'm looking forward to seeing how it's changed and grown over the years as well as to support a Canadian friend of mine, Natalie Thibault, who will most likely have a stall and be the only non Korean to do so.

When I return to Seoul I'll be doing a month long course of Hanji instruction from a well known Korean artist in Seoul. Whilst there I'll have the opportunity to brush up on my techniques as well as learning new ones. As I'm sure you're aware, it's important to have feed back on your work so you can continue to grow in your chosen field. Doing Hanji away from Korea normally means doing it on your own with no one else to throw ideas around with so this is where building a community of ex pat hanji lovers through the blog and on social media is so important.

With these plans in place and a renewed resolution to keep up my postings for another year I can't wait to move forward and see what's in store for me as I continue on my Hanji journey.

My inspirational saying for 2015 is

" ....if you fail to plan you plan to fail "

by Benjamin Franklin

Comments

Lotus symbol in Korean culture .....

In traditional Korean Hanji art you can see many different designs of plants, animals, letters and insects. I'm sure you've wondered what they all symbolise as they are repeated so often and in many different ways. In this post I just want to take a brief look at the lotus plant and what it symbolises for the Korean people. I've used this design on a few articles but I never really knew the full meaning of what it represented until I started doing some research for my book. Even though many of us aren't Korean we can still use these designs and in so doing, translate a deeper meaning to our articles. Here are a just a few of my favourites from the easiest to the more difficult to cut out. The lotus flower symbolises creation, birth, liveability and reproduction and therefore it's one of the most important symbols in both Korean culture and its traditional religions. In both Confucianism and Buddhism

The Buddhist symbol, Hanji & Korean culture ....

When selecting designs for my Hanji pieces I tend to make stylistic choices as to what will look best on each piece but the Korean designs all have very deep symbolic meanings. None more than the Buddhist swastika (manja) design. ‘Manja’ (만, Man is “卍” and 만자, Manja literally means “letter Man”) is also called Srivatsalksana in Sanskrit. It is one of the thirty-two (32) marks of excellence of the Buddha and is said to exist on his hands, feet, hair and waist. For those of us in the West this is often confused with the German Nazi swastika symbol but in fact it's been around for about three thousand years. The swastika is an equilateral cross with arms bent at right angles and all in the same direction, usually to the right, or clockwise. It's a symbol of prosperity and good fortune and it originally represented the revolving sun, fire, or life. The word swastika is derived from the Sanskrit swastika which means, "conducive to well

Online Hanji paper store, in English .....

I'm really pleased to be able to share with you this website where you can order a variety of Hanji papers from Korea and it's all in English !!! The store is based in Daejon, Korea. HAMINBRIDGE ( Thehanji ) was established by Moonyang Park in 1983. It's a family owned 2nd generation business and they have a factory in Junju. They also have a factory in China where some of the paper is made. The website is at www. thehanji.com and it provides a selection of specialty Hanji paper (Korean paper) and products. I ordered some papers from them recently to see what it was like and they were extremely efficient in dealing with the order and it was here in the UAE within 5 days so I was really impressed. The prices were good and they even have some on special, the paper is beautiful and the ease of ordering was amazing. They do sell rolls of paper, traditional papers and lanterns but overall I did think the range was a bit limited for what I wa

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