| Root Series, No. 16, "Mandala" |
| Exhibitions Junko's Writings Publications Selected Works About Junko Reviews Contact Links Home | | Junko found a complicated root which had been dug up from the ground. It seemed to her to contain a whole universe. She set it on a table in her studio and sketched it, studied it, and drew it for five years - twelve hours a day. She used a special collage technique: she cut out tiny pieces of magazine images and holding them with tweezers, layered them on to the paper. The tiny pieces were used for their color, hue, and texture -their valeur, rather than for the images themselves; but sometimes we can see the images if we look closely. They are weird little things: tadpoles, lizards, falling angel figures. -- This work, the 16th in the series of seventeen, shows the root in 63 rotations in 3-dimensional space. It is nearly an inch thick because of the layering; and it took Junko three months of constant work to complete. The full image is on the left; a detail is on the right. The colors seem to shift partly because the overall work gives the impression of light radiating from the center.
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