A Warrior Came to Eastern Market: The Art of Tsolmon Damba

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

An American Classic: An Eastern Market Icon-The Bowie Family at Eastern Market

The founding of the United States was a field holler, a jazz rhapsody, an orchestrated de- and re-construction, a Gospel moan, a torn down blues song ("ain't nobody's business if..."), a really sad, long and funny country song with many an operatic high note. One thing is clear: the backbone of early American life was the small family farm. My first memories are of my granddaddy's "place" in Humboldt, Tennessee. He had two barns, one with stalls for the pigs and cows and another for the hay, a tractor and equipment. Then there were his gardens. My brother and I called one "the big garden" (rows and rows of corn, sweet corn and white corn) and the other "the small garden" (the vegetable garden where most of our food came from.)

These farms grew vegetables, chickens, dairy cows, maybe goats or sheep, a mule (or, if they were wealthy, a horse). The small family farm is an original American classic. Eastern Market was built in part to give small family farmers from rural Maryland, and from northern Virginia and West Virginia, access to an urban market (Washington, D.C.) in which to sell produce and products.

Eastern Market was thought into existence by Pierre Charles L'Enfant in 1791. In 1805 President Thomas Jefferson issued a proclamation designating that an Eastern Market be built in Washington, D.C.; the Eastern Market that we see today was built in 1873, and the "Farmer's Shed" was built around 1906. At its inception, an Eastern Market open to all, with some families being merchants there for 90 or 100 years, was inconceivable.

The death knell of the small family farmer began to chime during the Industrial Revolution. As the twentieth century progressed, the concept of a small family farmer producing produce for sale directly to consumers was deemed outmoded, old-fashioned and inefficient. Of course, today we realize that "oldschool is new school"--we in the vanguard of the Green Revolution know that mega-farms and agribusiness are dangerous to our physical health and our environment.

Fortunately, today at Eastern Market we still have one family that has endured, thriven and prospered, the Bowie family of Camp Springs Maryland (now called Temple Hills). Ironically, neither L'Enfant nor President Jefferson had in mind the possibility of this "free" small farming family--

the Bowie family selling its homegrown produce at Eastern Market.

Teresa Bowie carries on this proud family tradition. Ms. Bowie, when asked, told me that she had been at the Market since she was five years old. She didn't give her age, but she said that meant about fifty years. The business was established by her great-grandfather, then kept by her grandfather and father; today, Ms. Bowie is still there every Saturday. When asked what her family farm's specialty was, she said "vegetables."

To locate Ms Bowie's stall under the farmer's shed, just look for another American classic, her Ford truck.

Okay, let's talk dirty:

there's eggplant Parmesan,

or baba ghanouj,

mais, le meilleur est

Ratatouille.

2 aubergines ( eggplants)

1 oigion (onion)

3 grosses tomates

2 courgettes (zucchini)

1 poivron rouge ( red pepper)

huile d'olive (3 cuilleres) ( olive oil)

herbes de provence, sel, poivre (salt, pepper)

________

Faire revenir tous les legumes

(sauf la tomate, apres les avoir coupes)

dans l'huile d'olive puis ajauter la tomate

coupee en morceaux-

saler- poivre et mettre les herbes de

provence. Se deguste chaud au froid.

__________

To wash it down?

Rose de Provence!

(Merci ,Madame Coudret,

pour la recette!)

( Ms. Teresa Bowie)

( On a cold winter day

there is nothing like

stewed tomatoes with

hot buttermilk biscuits.)

( I know what you're thinking: soup!

and, on the side, a piece of sourdough bread

for sapping. But do you know

that butternut and acorn squashes can make a fine

pie as well?)

( These babies would taste good steamed,

with a little salt, or stir-fried in sesame

oil, with hot peppers.)

(Did someone say stuffed peppers, with ground chicken or turkey, and

bread crumbs, garlic, parsley, olive oil

and maybe some feta or ricotta cheese? Or maybe you're seeing roasted red peppers, preserved for the winter in olive oil, a little vinegar, salt and pepper? There's nothing better in a sandwich, especially a pressed and grilled one.)

The Bowie family's long history as small family farmers says something wondrous about them, Eastern Market and the community that supports and cherishes us all. Happy Thanksgiving!

Witnessing,

Sonda T. Allen

Turtle's Webb