Kantha

My recent decorative work on porcelain explores motifs from Kantha, a traditional embroidery style from India. As an embroiderer myself, I find the visual appeal of this technique fascinating. In Kantha, the spaces between stitches are larger than the stitches themselves, which gives the fabric its unique puckering effect. 

I wanted to translate this aesthetic into my tableware. Since physically embroidering clay was not an option, drawing with an airbrush—a tool that provides an inherently imprecise and organic line—offered the perfect solution. Unable to replicate the physical puckering, I instead reversed the relationship between mark and space. My marks are thicker than the spaces between them, creating dense, textured fields where short lines laid one after the other mirror the rhythm of stitching. 

This abstract imagery is reminiscent of asemic art. For most people, asemic script is unreadable, but I use it to access my subconscious and make a personal cipher. In this way, I offer my code openly, inviting everyone to connect with it.