Light at the end of the tunnel

As I was sitting in my chair receiving my last dose of medication through my vein I couldn't help but to acknowledge my journey in getting this far.  Strangely enough, I also thought of my calligraphy piece at home and the journey it had taken.  

There were similarities.  Especially with all the unexpected turns and segues and subsequent follow-throughs.  Plans had to be modified, remedied and explored, with the goal of a successful completion.  The cliché of putting one foot in front of the other spoke volumes.  My colossal blunder became my confidant, my mirror and my reward in my hours of need.

I needed to do something to that piece.  I couldn't just abandon my comrade in a corner and allow cobwebs to collect.  

I built a frame for it.  Lumber was so expensive now, but I could justify that as a labor of love.  I used spar varnish as coating for my frame.  I loved that no nonsense peasant feel.

I applied several sprayings of a matte polyurethane on my work.  My setup was to display the piece naked  without a glass cover.  I wanted the carved marks and charred edges to be displayed in as a raw state as possible.  The polyurethane coating was just for added protection from the elements.

Then something unexpected happened.  The ruby red paper border was showing a lot of mottling.  I suspect those patches were the result of either errant starch when mounting my calligraphy or the glue adhesive somehow seeped through while mounting the entire piece onto the cardboard substrate underneath.

I was distraught at first; frantically searching for ways to cover these patches up.  I changed my mind once I test fitted the piece with the frame.  The mottling was a perfect match for the spar-varnished frame.  It looked like an antique piece.  I couldn't have done a better job of antiquing, if that was my intent.

I decided to make a statement with my piece by adding light to it; light that would show through the carved out brushstrokes.

A quick search online and a few clicks later I received a kit for ribbon LED light that was battery powered with a remote.  I was going hi-tech. 

I installed the strip of LED along the inside edge of my frame behind the cardboard.  The theory was the lights would illuminate the back wall onto which the piece was hung, thus the hollowed out brushstrokes would appear as lit characters.

https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipM_Bi_4pGbgsIPtoTM3HCv2RO0rvakFqOIvZDja/photo/AF1QipM8VQI7_pTioYBVvb3jQj3O57EKyJbmtcjRsDLM

Wow, that worked.

It was not as bright as I had envisioned, but it worked.

Somehow I saw the light at the end of the tunnel.   Happy to have witnessed the completion of a project that went through metamorphosis.  My butterfly!

Time to clean up my not-as-planned calligraphy project

Today is April Fool’s  Day.  A fitting for this fool to put some final touches on the mess that he has created. 

The Cold Food Festival piece is basically done, for all intensive purposes. I’m just doing quality control ( if there’s such a thing) to clean up the edges of the hollowed out words and to glue back lifted paper.  Forceps are used to carefully lift any unglued paper such that starch can be re-applied to secure it  

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I have tried to insert strips of folded sanding paper into the hollowed out voids, hoping to make the voids neater.  The sanding actually causes the paper along  cut edges to lift, creating lots of dog ears which requires re-starching the areas.  A real pain in the butt.

Somehow I have this bright idea.  Perhaps I can incinerate away the small pieces of chads.  I have several mosquito repellent coils that I can use in lieu of  joss sticks.  The coils are probably some sort of citronella infused incense sticks and I remember them as a necessity when I was a kid growing up in Hong Kong.  We didn’t have air conditioning and we slept with our windows wide open for circulation and cooling purposes.  An open door policy for these gnats.

Breaking the coil up into smaller fragments and lighting them up to burn off the paper lint.

 

The process seems to work fine except for the fact that the mosquito coil needs to be relit constantly. 

The paper and the corrugated cardboard draws too much heat from the small ember and snuffs it out quite rapidly. 

So what would be a more sustainable ember or flame?  How about a gas lighter powered by lighter fluid ?

WOW that’s a cinch!

Now I just have to be ready to blow out any flames from starting from inside the corrugated layers. 

This is a view from the back of the piece before the cleanup. I’m using this as an indicator of how messy it looked due to the incomplete excavating of the board. 

And after the tidying up,

I digitally flipped the photo to get the mirror image, showing what the front might have looked like, based on the current photograph, the words are almost legible now. 

It’s pretty amazing, especially when compared to the original calligraphy work,

One thing I had not intended on is the singed edges around the hollowed out words. The flame from the gas lighter not only cleaned up the paper lints but also charred the cut edges of the paper in the process. The 

By carefully placing the flame and extinguishing ant errant flareups I can actually lay down a singed edge and it’s making the brushstrokes more vivid. Aesthetically pleasing. 

I’m also struck by strings of events that leads me to this stage of my project. The project almost ran off the rails with my miscalculations and misguided visions.  Each remedy and course correction that I applied results in a different presentation without deviating from my original intent of creating a hollowed out calligraphy piece.  This project helps me to deal with my medical problems by allowing me to concentrate and visualize something that is fun and challenges that do not result in any real harm other than my pride. 

There’s also some irony here, well sort of.  The calligraphy is about Cold Food Festival, where open flame is discouraged and yet I’m garnishing my project with the assistance of the flame. 

Another interesting tidbit I manage to dig up is that the original calligraphy artwork was almost lost in fire. The first near disaster happened when the British and French incursion army burnt down the Old Summer Palace (圓明園）during the Qing dynasty and the second incidence happened later in the hands of a private collector.  The third recorded incidence occurred in 1923 when there was an earthquake in Tokyo, Japan and the artwork was in the hands of a Japanese collector. The ensuing fire from the earthquake almost took away this piece of calligraphy.  Currently it safely resides in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan. 

I found these images online showing the charred lower edge on the original copy,

Perhaps it is fate that I resort to playing with fire with my Cold Food Festival calligraphy piece.