While attending a Sufi ceremony during an art festival, I was fascinated by a chant that repeated 2 sentences in an endless repetition, like a mantra: Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar, La ilah illa-llah…
Here the two circles spell out the two stanzas, and like the music and the whirling dance of the dervishes, the design circles endlessly on the paper.
I also made a limited edition screen print, to which metal leaf is added by hand:
120 angles of 3º and about a dozen concentric circles
Here you can see a portion that’s penciled and another that’s already gilded. I worked in quarters because pencil smudges and I don’t like working over too much pencil.
The inner lines are delicate because pressing too hard on the pen makes it cut lean through the thin gold layer and into the glue. Next thing you know your pen is dead, nicely frozen by a layer of dry glue.