Week #43 & #44, Ink & Brush: Garlic and ...

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Dusti Bongé, Penworthy - Easy Glide Quality Writing Tablet - p.20, 1984, ink & wash on paper, 9” x 6”.

Dusti Bongé, Penworthy - Easy Glide Quality Writing Tablet - p.22, 1984, ink & wash on paper, 9” x 6”.

Given that we missed a week of E-news due to web-hosting issues, we will have a little bonus art this week. 

To go with last week’s ingredient of bell peppers, this week we bring you a lovely ink & brush sketch by Dusti Bongé of fresh garlic bulbs. It is hard to say something about this amazing little vegetable, Allium Sativum, that has not already been said. It is a culinary powerhouse, and often thought of in connection with various “spiritual” meanings and rituals. It is, however, not really associated with any significant symbolic essence in the art world.

Originating from Central Asia, a.k.a. Middle Asia, garlic is thought of, both in the West and in the East, alternatively as a wonderful food with healing, protecting, or purifying powers or a pungent food to be avoided. In the West garlic is regarded as effective in reducing blood sugar, cholesterol and high blood pressure, but then there are also the negative effects of blood thinning, heartburn and bad breath. In China, where they have been using garlic for millennia, they knew of its antibiotic qualities as early as 2000 BC. 

However, Buddhist and Hindu traditions advice against the use of garlic, and its potent family members, in one’s diet, given that their aromatic intensity can cause excitability and potentially anger. Similarly, according to traditional Ayurvedic practices garlic is a rajacik, that is, a food that will lead to restlessness and an increase in the production of mucus in the body (the latter does sound rather unpleasant). 

Dusti being a westerner who also embraced Buddhism probably did not attach any significance to garlic one way or the other. Rather, in this case, like the other fruit and vegetables from this series of ink and brush works, she probably just chose to depict the garlic because it was handily available and happens to have a lovely form. Notice how she captures the curvy shape of the cloves in the bulb with a mere 4 wispy strokes of the brush. Set off against these are the more rigid, dry clumps of roots with multiple, slightly heavier, straight marks. 

FOOTNOTE: Of course, deep down inside we all know that garlic’s two most vital functions are warding off vampires and breaking the curse of the kavorca or “the lure of the animal.”

BONUS ART:

Penworthy- Easy Glide Quality Writing Tablet - p.22, 1984, ink & wash on paper, 9” x 6”.

But wait, there are more ink brush studies of everyday foods in this sketchbook. Witness these lovely root vegetables with their stalks still attached. What do you think they are: beets, radishes, or turnips?