Joumana Medlej: The Art of Letting Go

Joumana Medlej is an artist, author and educator from Lebanon, now based in East London. She’s best-known for her work with early Arabic calligraphy, from which her visual language is derived, and also specialises in the art materials of that era. Having abandoned store-bought paints for the old ways of natural colour-making, she prepares her own supplies using medieval techniques, and forages for pigments and dyes wherever she finds herself. She's now drawing on her practitioner’s experience to translate Abbasid-era Arabic manuals into English and bring the voices of past masters to a general audience.

Joumana works out of her Hackney Wick studio and teaches Kufi calligraphy and related inkmaking with the Arab British Centre, the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, and others. She’s the author of two recent books on art technology: Inks & Paints of the Middle East and Wild Inks & Paints.

Joumana spoke at an event celebrating the Stanford Libraries' exhibit "The Handmade Book" an exhibit that explores the history and future of the book through a series of juxtapositions between contemporary artists’ books and examples from the medieval and early modern periods.

[whitbystoryteller]

I have Joumana's art in my house and it brings in a certain note of Divine magic. I never tire of these images