Hands of Welcome

It was wonderful to draw from a folk arts tradition which really fascinates me, in making the 'hands of welcome' for the Westcountry Storytelling Festival. I wanted the outstretched hands to be like maps, treasure maps, landscapes of story - and these thoughts led me to the visual storytelling tradition which began in 6th Century India and which Victor H. Mair refers to as "Picture recitation".

I've been entranced by different manifestations of 'picture storytelling' throughout ages and cultures - all involving visual stories intricately laid out on cloth, paper or stone to form an elaborate story map. I made my own storytelling scroll a few years ago, telling the very story of the picture storytelling tradition from its origins in early India to Asia, the Far East, Europe and North America... I performed it, accompanied by my accordion, to some fellow university students but the narration involved a heavy amount of facts delivered at a very quick pace and I've been a little afraid of performing it again...

The elaborate story landscapes of 'picture recitation' were the inspiration behind these festival signs, and the story imagery itself came from another favoured world of mine - medieval woodcuts.

Nb. as a maker of storytelling scrolls my colour palette definitely seems to have settled within the dusky pink and burgundy range - due to the colour scheme of the charity shop duvet cover which formed the background of my first scroll. Time to hit the charity shops again I feel.