Sculpture, painter, print marker-Artist- Elizabeth Catlet wrote "Art as a human endeavor"...
Art as a medium of international and cross generational communication? It happened ... a La salle a manger en Le College International de Cannes 2005. I was in the south of France trying to get my eat on, sitting at a table with sexagenarian Japanese folks. I don't speak Japanese, they spoke little English, and we were all supposed to be speaking French. I put on my "Sunday goin' to meetin' manners" and lanced into the fray of conversation. We asked each other " vous avez fait quoi aujourd'hui? "What did you do today?" The idea was to recount one's day in the passive French tenses of passe compose (terminal past) or l'imparfait (the continuous past). This was deadly dull, until I said I had gone into Nice to see Le Musee Matisse. It was as if a vista opened before us onto the beauty that is art. We saw each other; our differences of age, cultures and linguistic abilities had been mitigated-they dissolved in the face of our interest in French Impressionists, Picasso, Chagall, Renoir, Cezanne, Miro etc. Our love of art allowed us to come to a place of meeting and communication.
(Art Books in Tsolmon library)
We, talked after dinner for about an hour. At the end I looked up at this older Japanese lady and said " j'ai aucune idea pourquoi j'aime l'art de Matisse" ( I don't know why I like Matisse's art). She looked me in the eyes and said " We do not know why we like art, we just do".
(water color, on paper "Horses")
I felt and feel the same way when I view, stare at, an am fascinated by the works of Tsolmon Damba at Eastern Market. I love his paintings. One sees the line, percious, spare, curva linear, direct and black. The fluid, and graceful accuracy of water color. And finally the ancient iconography of his use of images, the horse, landscape and the warrior. Mr. Damba was born in Darkhan City in Northern Mongolia. He studied Monumental art at the college of Fine Art in Ulaanbaatar Mongolia and later earned a master's degree in Traditional Mongolian Painting from the Mongolian Institute of Fine Arts. His mastery of technique is such that he has done live demonstrations at the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art, the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. His work is in numerous private and public collections, most notably he did a mural for The Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Connecticut.
(finished pieces in the process of being mated)
Damba came to Eastern Market about eleven years ago. He was immediately made to feel at home. The first person he met in walking into the North Hall (Market 5 Gallery) was internationally renowned photographer and Eastern Market bedrock Jim Spillane. Damba said that he was impressed by Spillane because of his knowledge of Mongolia. It was Spillane who introduced Damba to the founder of the arts and crafts festival outside Eastern Market, and the founder of Market 5 Gallery inside the North Hall, John Harrod. Tsolomn Damba had found a new home for his art.
(water color on paper)
What is seen primarily at Eastern Market is Mr. Damba's mastery of watercolor. The detail in his work is incredible. However, Damba is also a scultptor of leather, and he paints in oil, ink and acrylic. With these facts as foreground recently he was challenged by the Gallery Caos on F (http://www.caosonf.com/) to create a new body of work on silk panels using ink as the medium. The result, to quote the French Impressionist Claude Monet ,"est une fete pour les yeux"-a feast for the eyes.
On walking up the steps to enter Caos on F one is stopped by a landscape painting made on a panel of silk that hangs nine feet tall, refined, subtle and elegant. All I can say is one must see the colors and the beauty of the gestural pose of the branch, reaching and reaching. Then, when one enters the gallery, on the left side are four smaller works on silk panels called "seasons." They are a meditation on change and the passage of time. If at this point you can take your eyes off these pieces, you are again stopped by the four-panel piece on the back wall, set off a bit from the wall so that the each of the four nine-foot silk panels are allowed to billow-this work is a must-see. The opening reception is Friday December 4, 2009 from 6-8:30 and the show Tsolmon Damba runs at Caos on F until December 23, 2009.
(detail acylic on canvas)
(handmade stone and wooden stamps that are dipped into a red ochre for signing each piece)
(leather sculture)
(a four panel warrior series, acrylic on canvas)
(Tsolmon Damba working on a small silk panel on his patio on one of the four pieces, in the "Seasons" series)
(silk panel-"Seasons"-series)
(silk panel series artist mark and signature)
Witnessing,
Sonda T. Allen
Turtle's Webb
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