Manon Sauvage
Tropical Forest Talisman

Media: Natural fibers, seeds and handmade papers from local plants
Size: 18" x 18" x .25"
$2200

Artist Statement:
Spending time in Nature, listening to the musical sounds of the forest and filling up my eyes with gorgeous colors and sacred natural patterns is one of my greatest pleasure in life. If we pay attention, plants are constantly teaching us how to heal our relation with our environment and with our inner self.

Slowly, in small quantity, and with deep respect, I am gratefully using some plants to extract fibers and create handmade papers, threads and dyes; and focus on soils and stones understanding to produce paints or watercolors. Each element picked for a creation result to be of important significance, as the creation will embody its essence and tell a related story.

The Hibiscus Elatus, el Majagua, not only provide us good quality fibers, but is also our sacred tree providing us clear spring water in our everyday life at the farm. In this artwork, like a small stream of running water escaping from the rocks, the thread of Hibiscus Elatus’ fibers is streaming between all the fibers inside a central weaving, bounding them together. Like roots on the ground, the raw fibers of banana tree and Hibiscus Elatus are communicating with seeds and weaved into a circle of life.

Well known for purifying the air, the Sansevieria trifasciata plant is offering a thin thread from long shinny-white fibers, bounding papers and weaving fibers together. Almost invisible like a tiny spirit hidden inside the matter, this thread is playing a key role by purifying the atmosphere. Other threads, naturally dyed with medicinal plants, are wrapped as a protection around the center of some papers. Plants like thyme, rosemary, eucalyptus and laurel leaves, achiote seeds, onions or turmeric; well know for their medicinal properties as antibacterial, antifungal, anti-inflammatory or anti-infectious; have been infusing their healing colors inside those fibers.

From light and water, plants are offering us raw materials for creation, colors, food and medicine. Greatest teachers humankind as ever known dawn through the ages, they are raising our awareness of environmentally responsible behavior and spiritual growth. Would it be possible to move forward toward ecological sustainability by transforming plants into handmade papers and fibers, to remind us our sacred bound with earth?

This artwork is a sacred tiny part of the tropical forest in the Caribbean, supporting and protecting me through difficult periods. It is an invitation to reconnect to a slower pace of life, in harmony with nature and natural cycles of life.

Biography

French artist and paper conservator, Manon Sauvage is specialized in hand-papermaking with local plants and work with fibers, dyes and pigments from her environment.

She graduated from the National Institute of Cultural Heritage of France, where she studied Heritage Preservation and Paper Conservation. Since then, she have been privileged to live and work through different countries between Asia, Europe, North America and the Caribbean, where she is currently living in a remote Puerto Rican agro-ecological farm. Her work resulted deeply inspired by traditional craftsmanshift, wisdom and rituals from different times, countries and cultures; as well as ancestral knowledge related to Puerto Rican tropical fauna and flora.

In her work, pigments from stones and soils, natural dyes and handmade papers from plants, handmade paints and watercolors, threads and raw fibers from local landscape, are embodying the essence of plants and soils through sacred, protective and healing creations.

While reminding us our sacred bound with Earth, her work aims to honor and follow the guidance of natural spaces surrounding us, by celebrating ancestral wisdom and the power, beauty and importance of Nature in our lives.