Japanese Scroll - Wall Mural

This is the second fabric art mural I've completed in just a few weeks. 

I got the inspiration from a pattern I found in the book, "Kake-Jiku."  As I mentioned last week in my post Paper Lantern Festival, the author/fabric artist told stories about each of her murals and why she created them. I love that idea and thought I'd do that with this Japanese Scroll mural!

When I saw this mural it reminded me of taking calligraphy classes in high school. During the 1940's there was a revitalization of the art of calligraphy. (No, I wasn't in high school during that time period! I'm not that old). Lloyd Reynolds was a local, Oregonian artist that helped bring this art form back, he taught at Reed College. My own calligraphy teacher took calligraphy classes from Lloyd Reynolds. I loved the beginning calligraphy class so much that my senior year, I took an advanced class. We even went on a field trip to see Lloyd Reynold's calligraphy. We used this book as our instruction manual. The Japanese calligraphy on the fabric I chose for the scroll reminded me of my days learning this art form.

To make this mural, I used a Japanese fabric with calligraphy on it for my scroll.  I searched quite a while until I found it. I wanted the perfect one. Before I cut out my scroll, I asked a cousins' daughter, who is a professor of Japanese, if I had the fabric facing the right direction. She confirmed I was good to go. 

The bamboo fabric I used for the border reminded me of my next door neighbor's home in Portland. Mr. Glyde always had the nicest yard in the neighborhood. In the corner of his backyard, he grew bamboo. He and his wife didn't have any children. My parents had 8 children, and looking back, I'm sure we drove him crazy! One funny memory of this neighbor is that when I would be in my backyard playing, Mr. Glyde would meow like a cat at me. I wonder if he knew that I really wanted a cat and once even set a bowl of milk out hoping one would want to live at my house? Nice man! 

You can find this bamboo fabric here.

The flowers on the mural are dimensional. There are great instructions in this book on how to make these origami-type folded flowers.

If this art form interests you, make sure you get a copy of the book Kake-Jiku found here.
I've got one more wall mural to finish before I ship these off to my daughter.  Pop on over here next week to see the final mural in this series. They've been so much fun to create!
xoxo Grandma

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