White Orchid

White Orchid
Digital Video
Variable

Inspiration China
White Box Gallery
Portland, OR
October 8, 2009-November 20, 2009

At the most basic level, handwriting and painting are man’s most personalized forms of mark making. Each stroke or flick of a pen or brush tells us something inherently unique about the writer or artist. Many Chinese say that writing ultimately shows a person’s innermost character.

Chinese writing, like brush painting, has structured methods of creation with traits and techniques as distinctive as the artists who create it.

This project is a macro view of the choreographed dance between brush, ink, and paper. This video reveals a sensuous flow and tempo as the ink is diffused onto the paper in the most precise yet expressive way. The brush moves through the frame in sweeping and staccato movements. There is a give and take between the pressing and lifting of the brush as the ink meets the paper. It gives a pervasive look into a tactile process that is somewhat hidden – and nearly forgotten – in an increasingly digital world.

Thank you to Ming Fen Lee for her permission to be filmed and interviewed for this video.

Watch the video here: http://vimeo.com/6630994

Darwin’s Sublime

Darwin’s Sublime
Edition of 50 Letterpressed Accordion Books
10” x 7”
June 2009

Text written by George Gessert
Artwork by Olenka Burgess
Typographic design by Alison Ho

This book was handset in Garamond Bold and Futura Light and printed letterpress on mulberry paper at Haptic Eye Editions. All production—including typesetting, platemaking, printing, bookbinding, and embroidery—were done by Liz Bayan, Olenka Burgess, Amy Chan, Libby Corliss, Alison Ho, Colin Kull, Amy Lange, Alexsondria Miller, Kim Pearson, Emma Schluntz, and Harry Schneider, under the direction of Rebecca Childers.

“Darwin’s Sublime” is excerpted from George Gessert’s book, Green Light: Notes Toward an Art of Evolution, forthcoming from MIT Press.

Photographs for this project were taken by Alison Ho.

Project

Project
We love having you
Skateboard and t-shirt company
March 2009

In collaboration with Jess Andrews, Liz Bayan, Winter Gibbs, Alison Ho, Sean Kesterson, Nick Stokes, Steven Uppinghouse, Peter Yoon, and Associate Professor Michael A. Salter, we created a skateboard and t-shirt company. We designed 8 distinct lines.

Liz Bayan and Alison Ho made Project Grandma-essentially, a skateboard and t-shirt line for grandma.

Project Grandma is “perhaps the most elegant and the most sarcastic of all the lines; using doilies, needlepoint, and a refined sense of wit to deliver beautiful designs that come from way outside the skateboard world and reside even further away when they are delivered. proudly not skaters, these artists succeed in making the impossible, desirable.”

Alison Ho was responsible for photographing and making a Project publication, which is both online and for sale in print.