From House To Home

The Japanese ruling family forbade anyone else to practice it. Dutch guilds guarded the secrets of it for more than 200 years. And Reza Antoszewska has brought it alive on North Street.

In her work, Antoszewska combines two ancient art forms: Ebru paper marbling and Arabic, or Farsi, calligraphy. She creates words with and on marbled paint. In essence, she draws on water. She adds thickener to a basin full, she says, and over this surface, she scatters oils or acrylics or gouache.

“You have to be one-third chemist, one-third cook, and one-third artist,” she says.

Patterns form from the movement of the water and the thicknesses of the paint, and she draws them out with combs. Over these bright backgrounds, she lays paper cut-outs of calligraphy. She finds ancient words in buildings and in books, she says. Right now, she is working on a series from Ulu Jami, a mosque in Bursa, Turkey. The calligraphic patterns on the mosque walls are black and white and billboard-sized.

“I had seen them in books,” she says, “and I was deeply moved. Then I went into the mosque, and there they were. I am so moved to be able to include them in my work now.”

Islam discourages drawings in the shape of living things, and so Islamic artists have adorned buildings in praise of their God with words. The strokes of the letters are mesmerizingly beautiful, she says, even to people who don’t know what they say. Circles and mirror image pillars spell the name of God. The script may even form shapes—a face with sombre brows and jade green earrings. A lion shimmering gold.

The colors came before the words, Antoszewska says. Records of ink and water paper marbling in China go back 2,000 years, and the oldest paintings date back to 12th century Japan. Shinto priests created the art of Suminagashi—laying paint on the water and letting the water ripple it like sunlight on a lake.

Marbling traveled along the Silk Road to India, and artists began to shape the designs. They set the patterns on a woman’s skirt or an elephant’s hide. Then in Iran, Islamic mystics of the 15th century began to use marbling in books, and Turkish artists used wooden styluses to draw the paint into leaves and flowers—long tapered tulips.

This Turkish tradition aroused Antoszewska’s interest. She first put her hands to Ebru with the guidance of Turkish artist Hikmet Barutcugil when he visited Boston in the 1990s. She now studies under Feridun Ozgoren, a Turkish artist living in Boston, and teaches at Miss Hall’s School in Lenox.

“I have a more Western and contemporary feel to my work, and I don’t shy away from that,” she says. “I like sitting between East and West. There’s a great need for people to be there.”

For more information, visit www.ebrufineart.com.