- Thursday, March 27, 2008
- Let Them Drink Art!
- Posted by Zach in Art Friday Post News
-
According to a several thousand year old legend, an emperor named Shen Nung once insisted on drinking only boiled water. One breezy day after a grueling walk, Shen rested while his servants prepared his drinking water. The wind caught some leaves, blew them into the pot, and they turned the water brown. Wouldn’t you know it? Shen thought the beverage was delicious and now we have tea. How about that?
The combination of two raw elements to create a third element is central to the idea of culture and, by extension, civilization. Not only is tea to be considered a refined and civilized drink because well-spoken British folks drink it with biscuits, and cultured southern folks drink it over ice with buckets of sugar, and hygienic Asian folks drank it back when Europeans rolled around in disease–these are great reasons to consider it a civilized beverage, but in addition to all this, the story of it’s very origins almost defines what civilization is.
Lord Raglan once said, “Culture is roughly anything we do and the monkeys don’t.” In keeping with Lord Raglan’s assumption, I asked the guys here to produce a little culture and paint with some tea. The problem of course, is that tea, while dark in the cup, is often nearly invisible when you put it on paper. After some futile attempts, I went down stairs to the Dollar General and exchanged an entire dollar for 100 tea bags. Then I made … “The Tea of the Hundred Bags.” This stuff is thick! It smells a little like wet mulch, and tastes like you’ve just made out with the Hindu goddess of anger. Still, it shows up a bit more on paper, which is the important thing.
So here are some tea paintings that range from Alaskan Mask Carvers to Art Noveau girls. They all deal directly or obliquely with civilization. Hope you enjoy them.
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8 Responses to “Let Them Drink Art!”
wonderful. very inspiring.
Peace. - Caleb
neat-o!
What a great idea! I must say that posting pictures adds a lot to the blog - thanks! Shows a lot of creativi-tea and varying degrees of abili-tea! Seems like you have a great tea-m spirit. I better stop before I bore you all to tea-rs . . .
[...] a tea drawing done by Chris for Portland Studio’s blog. I am so a tea drinker. [...]
These are beautiful! Thanks for sharing!
omg!!!!!! that last one is so beautiful. it is like a dancing thorugh a rose-coloured dream..
I love painting with tea! I recently painted a collection of “Tea Geishas” , they are up at my deviant art gallery. http://khallion.deviantart.com/gallery/
looks great