In the late 1980s, Dusti Bongé being in her 80s herself, never slowed down and continued to produce a formidable volume of work, and with her indefatigable creative curiosity continued to explore new media and methods. 

One such exploration was when she, having become good friends with abstract artist, Joey Rice, they started experimenting together with various papers and inks.  One of the results was a series of marbleized papers they created together. While they were doing this, Dusti started working with the very heavy lacquer ink they were using for marbleizing in some of her other works on paper, creating several mixed media pieces with intense colors and deep blacks. The reason these pieces are unique is their very thick, fluid quality.

She also revisited her interest in "ink brush painting” or "sumi-e" painting created in the quintessential East-Asian calligraphic method. Having honed her ink brush skills years earlier, in the early 1950s, Dusti was quite adept at the method, creating numerous iterations of bamboo, trees, flowers, fruit, as well as absract compositions.