Mr Chippa
the Woodblock Carver of Bagru
Written and Illustrated by Lee FullARTon
Woodblocks carved by Ranu and Sahid Khan Bagru India 2019
The Back Story
In 2011 Lee undertook an Artist in Residency called Drawn to India. During this time she visited the Woodblock Colony of Bagru near the Pink City of Jaipur. This area is steeped in history and tradition as the artisans carry on the work of their forefathers creating blocks, prints and textiles in the same fashioned techniques and tools for over 500 years.
As part of this residency the artists worked with the woodblock carvers to have their designs carved for use in their personal work.
As the artists worked with Mr Khan, Lee observed the process with great interest and documented the surrounds of the colony in detail observing the landscape, the people and the interactions with all that came by Mr Khan woodblock shed. It was immediate that Lee felt pure inspiration to share the story of the woodblock artisans through a children’s picture book. During this time Lee established a friendship with textile designer Kamlesh Vyas and the Khan family.
In 2014 Lee was award an Artist Grant by Arts Queensland to undertake an Artist in Residence at Sanskriti Kendra New Delhi India, to further observe and research the woodblocks of India.
On return to Australia Lee stepped back into working life and percolated her story book idea and researched her story further. Committed to her dream of creating a Handmade Artist Picture Book, Lee finally completed the text in 2017 and the following year was spent working on the illustrations.
In March 2019 Lee returned to Bagru India to meet with Kamlesh and the Khan Family to work on transforming the illustrations from Mr Chippa the Woodblock Carver of Bagru into carved woodblocks. In the latter part of 2019, the blocks arrived in Australia. A second set of blocks were then commissioned to complete the illustrations and text for the book and arrived in February 2021. For the next several months Lee and fellow printmaker and friend from Art College Sara Butcher printed Mr Chippa in Lee’s Queensland based studio.
Mr Chippa the Woodblock Carver of Bagru hand printed and hand-stitched Artist Book was shortlisted for the 2022 Libris Award Mackay Art Gallery Queensland.
Mr Chippa the Woodblock Carver of Bagru Expose by Professor Louise Gwenneth Phillips