How I Spent A Lot of Last Week

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday.

Today I have an art journal page to share for both Elizabeth's Recycle, Reuse, Repurpose challenge at Art Journal Journey and also for Rain's  Art and Dinner Date. Rain's theme this week is brushes, and you can see the one big brush image on my page.

This is a spread from my most recent junk journal project. The background has scraps of magazine paper and also  wrapping paper pieces. The feather paper is from the birthday gift that my daughter gave me.  The rest of the images on the pages are made using magazine images that I fussy cut out.

Last week I had a lot of art time, and this week, with some appointments and nice weather, I haven't had hardly any. Nor have I had a lot of interesting cooking time, so instead of any food this week for the dinner date part of this post, let me share more of my trip to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. 

Let me start with this really amazing exhibit.  There was a light in the black/grey box hanging in the center of the room, and that light created these amazing shadows while passing through the designs in the box that hung around it.

And one other interesting exhibit was this hall of flags. The actual name of the exhibit is United Nations.

They may not look like  typical flags because they are made out of human hair.

The artist, Gu Wenda, wanted to show how all people are alike, no matter what country they live in. He chose to use human hair because  we all share it, and he wove the hair into flags from around the world.

Here's a couple of close ups.

Gu Wenda was also the artist who created the light box in the first 3 photos from the museum. 

Gu Wenda is an interesting artist, and as I learned, one of the most influential to come from modern China. I had never heard of him before my museum visit, but I read about him on Wikipedia. You can read about him here if you are interested: Gu Wenda.

The artist began this United Nations project in 1993, and this is one of his most notable works.

I found my visit to the Peabody Essex Museum very interesting not only because of the art. Since I had just finished reading a book about China (Wild Swans by Jung Chang), so much of what I saw had a connection to that book. That includes this artist. Even though he wasn't mentioned by name in the book, his biography talked a lot about how he became an artist after the Cultural Revolution.  In the book I read the author wrote a lot about the Cultural Revolution, and how after it ended, many things, such as art, returned to China.

OK, that's enough for me. I hope everyone is having a great week so far. Thanks for visiting.