Modern Style Vietnamese Lacquer Art

We are offering a range of very affordable lacquer paintings from Vietnam. What makes these particularly interesting is that they are a modern take on a very traditional, 2000 year old, Vietnamese technique - lacquer painting.
Lacquers are made from resins harvested from the Rhus Succedanea Tree from the Phu Tho Province of northern Vietnam.

A full description of the process can be found on the Karuna Village website, but it is a long and complex process that can take between 75 days to over 100 days for some pieces, and involves the application of of materials like mother of pearl, egg shell and gold leaf.

These modern versions use many of the same techniques and are all themed around the universal beauty of women and nature. They seem to be a particularly popular item at the moment - check them all out on the Karuna Village website by clicking on this link - click here.

Visit the Fair Trade Cafe

For those of you who happen to live in Phoenix or, indeed, are planning to visit the city, you can see a small selection of the fair trade fine art sold by Karuna Village at the Fair Trade Cafe, located at the junction of Roosevelt and 1st Ave. We are currently showing a selection of art from Vietnam.

Cafe owner, Michele White, who also founded Karuna Village, has done a wonderful job in creating a superb venue for local arts including both monthly wall art displays of local artists' work as well as poetry and music performances - see the Fair Trade Cafe website (azfairtrade.com) for details. Not only that but you also get a great cup of fair trade coffee and great food while you are there as well!

The cafe is also a participating venue of the monthly Phoenix Art Walk and Michele is very much part of the initiative to improve the Copper Square area of the city where the cafe is located. 

Fair Trade for Huichol Art

Shortly after my last post I came across this video on YouTube. It is a great example of the kind of organisation that Karuna Village wants to work with to help them fulfill their aim to help indigenous groups like the Huichol get a fair price for their art. The Konshak Foundation was formed to help the Huichol Indians to market their art at a fair market price, and to "create new fusion of contemporary art".

The video very succinctly highlights the plight of the Huichol and how such organisations as the Konshak Foundation can be of help without being overtly intrusive. This is a great example of what amazing good the internet is capable of facilitating - a subject I would like to delve into further some time.
Enjoy!

Origin of the Idea

Photo by Dave Kellet

The germ of the idea for setting up a fair trade fine art business began back in November 2005 when Naomi and I were on a short cruise holiday along the Mexican Riviera. One of our ports of call was Puerto Vallarta where the ship docked for the day and we went into town to explore. Puerto Vallarta has a very good market, and that is where we headed for. We discovered a little shop at the edge of the market which sold Huichol art, which consisted of brightly coloured 'yarn paintings' and beadwork. I'll go into more detail about the art produced by the Mexican Huichol Indians in a later post, but suffice it to say we were immediately drawn to this artwork.

Earlier on in our trip we had attended a timeshare presentation, for which 'torture' we were compensated with a gift of $100 cash. Well, it happened that the particular piece of Huichol art we were drawn to cost exactly $100, so we figured what better use could we put that money to than to purchase this wonderful piece? (As illustrated in the picture).

We chatted with the propietor, Ricardo, and it turned out that the shop was part of a nonprofit organisation set up to promote the art of the Huichol Indians so that they had both a source of income in what were very poor mountain villages and, at the same time keeping alive their unique folk art traditions. The thing that interested me at the time was when he showed us photographs of of the villages and some of the artists at work. The Huichol Indians live in round huts. I was, at that time, involved in a project building replica round houses of the British Iron Age and so this was, to me, an amazing coincidence. Ricardo said that if we were ever in Puerto Vallarta again he would arrange a visit to the Huichol villages and introduce us to the artists. We vowed then and there that we would, at some point in the future, take him up on his kind and generous offer.

Our thoughts then were that this was great art and that there would be a great market for this quality of work back in the US and Britain. That thought remained in the back of our minds and thus was born the germ of the idea to set up a fair trade fine art business.

New Australian Aboriginal Painting

A great new piece of art came up for sale today. This is a great example of why I wanted to set up Karuna Village - Aboriginal artists from Australia produce some of the best indigenous art in the world, and this is a perfect example - a painting very much tied in with the aboriginal beliefs and landscape.

The piece is by artist Paddy Japaljarri Stewart.

The title of the piece is Ngarlu Jukurrpa (Love Story Dreaming)

It is Acrylic on Linen, executed 2005, and is 122cm x 91cm in size.

The Dreaming site of Miinypa or Yanyilingi is Ngarlu, meaning "red rock", country east of Yuendumu.

Jungarrayi man called Lintipilinti who lived at Ngarlu fell in love with a Napangardi woman, a tabu relation as the women was his skin mother in-law. This relation is forbidden to him under the Warlpiri skin system. Lintipilinti fell in love with the Napangardi women when he saw her.  Lintipilinti was very impressed and aroused by her beauty and began to wonder how he could win the Napangardi. He went to Ngarlu and made hair string for her, singing as he worked.

Paddy has depicted the hair string spindel 'wirigy' by the 4 black shapes in the corners of this painting. The Napangardi women could not sleep and felt strange in her stomach, she felt sick. She realised that someone was singing for her. A little bird visited her every day taking Jungarrayi’s songs to her.

That bird can still be heard sometimes in the bush - It helps people find certain bush foods. It also talks to people when they are lonely, sad or in danger. Lines on the canvas represent the force of the song pulling the Napangardi women to Lintipilinti. When the two lovers met again and made love they turned to stone, as their relationship was tabu in Warlpiri skin system. The place where they turn to stone can still be seen at Ngarlu today.

The story behind the art is as important to us as the piece itself. If you re interested in this or similar kinds of art then visit our online gallery at www.karunavillage.com