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Title: “YAMADERA”
(Name of a famous Buddhist temple and pronounced, “yahm-a-dara”)


Size: 33.5” W x 33.5” H (unframed)  

Story:
Centuries ago in Japan, steep mountains with their sheer rock facades were considered the boundaries between this life and the next. Many were impassable such as the rock mountain at Yamadera, but it was there in 860 A.D. that a Buddhist priest began the huge endeavor of chiseling away at the mountain and creating an awe-inspiring temple. A gateway for the faithful to the next life. And for over 1000 years a flame has burned constantly at the temple as both an offering and a beacon from this life to the next. And if you make it to the top a celebrated haiku is etched in the rock, “Stillness, penetrating the rocks, the voice of the cicada.” Namaste.

Materials:
Acrylic, fluorescent and metallics paints on heavy watercolor paper, veiled over with hand-made Japanese rice lace, bathed in a mixture of archival beeswax and UV-resistant polymers, with raised 18kt gold on flower basket, bordered with insets of embossed leaf silk, with outside border panels wrapped in Chinese silk and vintage Indian sari cloth, adorned at top right with Chinese Han dynasty charm with Buddhist relief, affixed with melted religious wax collected from holy temples and monasteries, accented with a vintage Chinese silk tassel, all mounted onto archival museum board.



Click for Enlarged
Section of Art
Click for Enlarged
Section of Art

Instructions for saving the images for your gallery's website:
Click for Mac or Windows self-extracting files that contains all three jpegs of the above title.

This website and all images contained on these pages are ©2010 by Michelle Samerjan.

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