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"An important and strikingly beautiful book about the sacred Hindu practice of threshold drawing! In the Hindu world-view, threshold is a profoundly important concept that represents a passage between one space and place and another, creating a visual bridge between the secular and the sacred. Accordingly, the literal threshold a person crosses when entering and exiting a home or business symbolizes the threshold one crosses between the physical and spiritual realms of existence. Hindus have long believed it is possible to affect a person's well-being by using diagrams to sanctify the ""threshold space."" The diagrams do so by ""trapping"" ill will, evil, bad luck, or negative energy within their colourful and elaborate configurations, thereby cleansing those who traverse the space and sending them on their way with renewed spirit, positive energy, and good luck and fortune. AUTHOR: Martha A. Strawn is Professor of Art Emerita at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte and a photographer based in Florida and North Carolina. 167 colour and 32 b/w photographs"

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9781938086175

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Strawn presents a series of photographs and essays on the threshold designs used by women in India. Information for this book was gleaned directly from village women in India and Indian scholars. The photographs are the focus of the book and are divided into three portfolios: the first and second feature designs made with purely aesthetic intent, while the third is made up of figures that convey cultural information about Indian life. The essays, which bookend the portfolios, reference the photos in all three sections. Together, the portfolios and essays combine to create a visual ecology that attempts to convey the Indian worldview to the reader and viewer. --ProtoView

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Martha A. Strawn is Professor of Art Emerita at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte and a photographer based in North Carolina and Florida who is recognized worldwide for combining aesthetic and scientific inquiries into the study of place that she calls visual ecology. She co-founded The Light Factory Contemporary Museum of Photography and Film in Charlotte, and she has served on numerous boards throughout her career, including Friends of Photography and the Center for the Study of Place. She received a Fulbright Fellowship to India and also a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in photography. Her work is exhibited internationally in both art and science museums, among them the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Smithsonian Institution, Science Museum of Minnesota, San Diego Museum of Natural History, Princeton Art Museum, National Geographic Society Museum, Museum of Florida Artists, Mint Museum of Art, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston, and Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Her books include Alligators, Prehistoric Presence in the American Landscape (1997) and, with Yi-Fu Tuan, Religion: From Place to Placelessness (2009). Mark H. Sloan is Director and Senior Curator of the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston and the author and co-author of ten books, including Force of Nature: Site Installations by Ten Japanese Artists (2007), Return to the Sea: Saltworks of Yamamoto Motoi (2012), and, with Roger Manley, Self-Made Worlds: Visionary Folk Art Environments (1997). Kapila Vatsyayan is a renowned Indian scholar of classical Indian art, architecture, and dance and the founding Director and Chairperson of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. She is the author of many books, including The Indian Arts, Their Ideational Background and Principles of Form (1995), The Square and the Circle of the Indian Arts (2003), and Transmissions and Transformations: Learning through the Arts in Asia (2011). William K. Mahony is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Religion and Chairman of the Religion Department at Davidson College, where he teaches courses on the religions of India. His books include The Artful Universe: An Introduction to the Vedic Religious I Jack Colling is an artist currently based in Blairsville, Georgia. For fifty-nine years, he lived and worked in Central Florida, where he practiced the art of pen-and-ink drawing, specializing in nature, endangered species, and landscapes. His work is in

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