Letter & Line

Design*Sponge featured new online art gallery Buy Some Damn Art (BSDA) this week. Part art dealer and curator, BSDA’s mission is simple: to showcase and introduce 6 new original pieces of art every Tuesday. BSDA launched with artwork by Becca Statdlander and Yelena Bryksenkova. I recognized the folksy, muted tones of Yelena Bryksenkova’s pieces from my copy of Barbara Comyns’ Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead†, published by the wonderful the Dorothy Project‡, which I mentioned here.

I love that they were working off the same idea–it’s reflected in the pieces on display.

Tell us about the work in this show.

YB: This collection is based on the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, and simple, rustic life in general. We are both drawn to the different aspects of this concept. I like Leonard Koren’s interpretation of wabi-sabi as “exactly about the delicate balance between the pleasure we get from things and the pleasure we get from freedom from things.” The idea is that all of these scenes, interior and exterior, belong to the same world

Kindling, Pen, watercolor, and gouache on paper // Artist: Yelena Bryksenkova

BS: It’s based on the Japanese concept, “wabi-sabi” which describes beauty and wisdom in simplicity and things that are imperfect.  This quote explains it well-” If an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi-sabi”.  We decided to make complimentary scenes and apply the concept to illustrations of quiet country life. I went with outdoor scenes, and Yelena with indoor, and we stuck to a muted, natural palette.

Lilly Pond, Gouache on watercolor paper // Artist: Becca Stadtlander

“Wabi-sabi” is a term that I’ve heard but never really looked into. An English equivalent would be “rustic” but there seems to be something more spiritual in wabi-sabi that doesn’t seem to translate. Separately, “wabi” refers to the spiritual and philosophical while “sabi” points to the fleeting and physical realm. It seems that Japanese aesthetics are based upon the idea that wabi-sabi “nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.”

Well, that is what’s frustrating and beautiful about just about everything.

I’ve signed up for the BSDA newsletter (you can, too!) and look forward to seeing more art in my inbox!

♦

† Synopsis from the publisher:

This is the story of the Willoweed family and the English village in which they live. It begins mid-flood, ducks swimming in the drawing-room windows, “quacking their approval” as they sail around the room. “What about my rose beds?” demands Grandmother Willoweed. Her son shouts down her ear-trumpet that the garden is submerged, dead animals everywhere, she will be lucky to get a bunch. Then the miller drowns himself . . . then the butcher slits his throat . . . and a series of gruesome deaths plagues the villagers. The newspaper asks, “Who will be smitten by this fatal madness next?” Through it all, Comyns’ unique voice weaves a text as wonderful as it is horrible, as beautiful as it is cruel. Originally published in England in 1954, this “overlooked small masterpiece” is a twisted, tragicomic gem.

Barbara Comyns was born in England, raised largely by governesses, painted and dealt in antiques, and published eleven books.

‡The Dorothy Project is dedicated to publishing novels written (mostly) by women. It was named after a Dorothy Traver, a library and book-mobile driver, art lover, “who on each birthday and holiday gave a book with an owl bookplate. “

Sometimes, I’ll come across a book or author who hasn’t found an English-language publisher. This is my plea to the interwebs.

There isn’t a particular title that is begging to be translated, per se. But in this Q&A at Europa Editions’ tumblr, Alison Anderson, translator of Laurence Cossé’s A Novel Bookstore and Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog, among others, covers the difficulty of finding an English equivalent of “l’adéquation,” sailing, and this, which caught my attention:

Do you have a dream translation project, ie a work of literature that has not been translated yet?

As an existing project, I would love to find a publisher who is passionate about Christian Bobin¹ so I could do more of his books (I’ve had two short translations of his work published so far, and a short excerpt). And I dream of finding an untranslated, obscure female author² from an earlier time period, someone like Irène Nemirovsky (whose works are all being translated by Sandra Smith), so I could do her entire oeuvre…

¹ It appears that Christian Bobin won Le Prix des Deux Magots in 1993 and has published ~50 novels according to his Wikipedia page. Going by my success, or lack thereof, of trawling the internet for more information, it looks like he’s still “un auteur assez discret, « amoureux du silence et des roses ».“

² HINT: And I should think Dorothy, a Publishing project would be the perfect place to publish an obscure female author. . . . See: Dorothy catalog.