Artist: Roshan Houshmand
Title: Under the Bodhi Tree; White Clouds
Year created: 2018
Medium: Mixed media on wood panel (Bodhi leaf, fabric,mirrors, block print, acrylic, oil on wood)
Edition: 1/1
Height (inches): 10
Width (inches): 8
Depth (inches): 1
Description of piece:
The white clouds are block printed around a Bodhi leaf from the Mahabodhi Temple in India, where Buddha is said to have achieved enlightenment. The embroidered fabric remnant was originally meant to be a pocket or breast plate on traditional clothing from Gujarat, India. Here, it represents a stupa, a dome-shaped structure erected as a Buddhist shrine.
Artist bio:
Roshan Houshmand is an American artist and educator who was born in the Philippines in 1961, raised there and Iran until 1976. Her BA is from Bennington College (1982) in Vermont, and her MA and MFA are from Dominican University’s Rosary College Graduate School of Fine Arts (an affiliate of Dominican University) in Florence, Italy (1983, 84). A life-long learner, Roshan studied extensively in NYC with Julio Alpuy of the Taller of Joaquin Torres Garcia (Founder of Universal Constructivism) and most recently at Schechen Monastery’s Tsering Art School in Nepal. Houshmand’s work is exhibited and collected internationally. Her painting “Under the Bodhi Tree; More White Clouds” was recently featured at the 3rd Barcelona Biennial at MEAM (Museum of European Modern Art) in Barcelona, where she also received the International Diego Velazquez Prize for her painting “Kushinagar”. In 2019 she had a solo exhibition “Under the Bodhi Tree” with Michigan University’s Gift of Art Program at Ann Arbor, Michigan and this fall she will have “Under the Bodhi Tree; Rituals” included in the exhibitions “Homenage a Julio Uruguay Alpuy por sus Discipulos” at MuHar (Museum of Art History) in Montevideo, Uruguay in October, and at Museo Mazzoni in Maldonado, Uruguay from November through January, 2020. Her works “Under the Bodhi Tree; Caravanserai Red and Gold” and “Under the Bodhi Tree; Caravanserai Remnants” will be exhibited at the Giorgio Vasari International Award Exhibition at the Chancellery Palace in Rome in October 2019. Her painting “Thus I Have Heard” was featured in Italia Docet/Laboratorium, a collateral event of the 56th Venice Biennale and her mixed-media work, “The Red Dress”, was exhibited at “21st Century American Women Artists” at the US Mission to NATO in Brussels, Belgium. She received the Special Merit Recognition Award for the Representation of Scientific/Mathematical Principle and Phenomena at “SMARTART” at The Next Big Idea in Los Alamos, NM for her painting, “Theoretical Event” and she received the Susan Asarian Nickerson Social Commentary Honorable Mention Award for her work “The Cage” in the exhibition, “Endangered” at the Woodstock Art Association and Museum in Woodstock, NY. Several of her paintings were featured in TOTEM at the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida. Roshan has received numerous awards and grants from other sponsors including New York State Council of the Arts and New York Foundation for the Arts. She is an online adjunct painting instructor at SUNY Delhi in upstate NY and an online adjunct drawing and humanities instructor with Southern New Hampshire University. She currently lives and works in Andes, NY. For more information please click here!