Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky

The alchemical process of transforming matter into beauty

Happy International Women’s Day!

Today I want to introduce you to a woman artist who has captured my heart and imagination: Joumana Medlej. I discovered her Substack, Caravanserai, and I was soon mesmerized by her dedication to her craft and her materials.

I first started following Joumana in late 2023 when she spent a fortnight in rural Andalusia, surrounded by stone oaks, on an art residency. Her one-off artist book was inspired by the dancing oaks on this land, and literally written with the earth they grow in.

Local earth in gum tempera and indigo dye on paper. Cover: indigo-dyed paper, wood and turquoise beads. 15x15 cm closed, 15x150 cm unfolded.

In the above image you can see Joumana's process of creating this single edition of Trees are Poems — testing the different types of soil in the bottom left of the picture, and then writing the poem out across the carefully folded paper which was then bound.

The text is a quote from Kahlil Gibran that came to mind as she walked under the trees:

"Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness."

Here is the video of the finished product:

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Joumana Medlej is an artist, author and educator from Lebanon, best known for her work with early Arabic calligraphy.

In her artwork Joumana has used a variety of mediums, but now focuses on sustainability and respect for the living world. As she shares:

"By hand-preparing or even foraging natural colours, I’m involved in the creative act from its earliest starting point, the alchemical process of transforming matter for the sake of Beauty."

Here is a page from her book, Wild Inks and Paints: (available as an e-book: https://majnouna.com/shop/digital/)

Her work is rooted in the traditions of her homeland, birthed out of the darkness of war and chaos, and expanded into her love of the natural world. As she shares in her artist statement:

The first seeds of my artistic practice were planted in the darkness of the civil war that defined my childhood. I escaped the chaos and fear by turning inwards; there I found order and permanence, a deeper reality that still sustains me. This is now the core of my work: I look for the greater truths behind personal feelings and outer events, and translate them into form to give the viewer a taste of the wholeness and mystery that underly our brittle world.

Joumana is now based in East London and works out of her Hackney Wick studio. Her work is found in private and public collections in Europe, the USA and the Middle East. She teaches Kufi calligraphy and inkmaking at the Arab British Centre, the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, and other institutions upon request.

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Joumana’s newest creation, Anthropocene, Book I is a portable manuscript that recounts the six days of Creation as written in the Book of Genesis. But as you turn the pages holes begin to appear in the pages and then multiply, making the text increasingly difficult to read. These lacunae are in fact the silhouettes of extinct animal species, wiped out by human activity within Jacouma's lifetime.

Artist book: Mineral pigments on paper, hand-cut and coptic-bound with linen thread. Cover: Painted paper and olive-waste "leather". 13x18 cm closed, 26x18 cm open

Their absence undermines the meaning and integrity of the text: By punching holes in the web of life, we are destroying something sacred, the original Book of Creation, without which all our scriptures are meaningless.

The title ("Book I") suggests, however, that this story isn’t over. The next book remains to be written. What will we make of it?

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Here is a wonderful video on her process and inspiration: Freedom in Restriction: My Journey with Kufi.

https://letterformarchive.org/shop/freedom-in-restriction-my-journey-with-kufi/

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Learn more about Joumana's art on her website: majnouna.com or follow along with her journey at majnouna.substack.com.

I honor the slow, handmade, and earth-honoring beauty making of artists like Joumana, which help bring the immense heartbreak and joy of our times into tangible form we can hold in our hands.

https://majnouna.com/portfolio/story/

Story, قصّة, is absolutely central to humanity, yet our current culture is strangely divorced from the power of myth and storytelling, having drawn an artificial line between “what is real” and “what is imaginary”, that to my mind strongly parallels the difference between language and dialect: “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” In other words, the truth in stories is denied simply because we don’t have the ability or willingness to see it.

One could write at great length on the subject of Story, but I don’t think anyone can put it better than Joseph Campbell, to whom I refer anyone interested. For the source of my inspiration here, see this article by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, of which I quote a paragraph:

“If a story is not born from the inner world it will lack the power to effect any real change. It will speak just to our conscious selves, the surface layer of our being, rather than engaging us from the depths. The stories of the past, the myths that shaped humanity, spoke to our individual and collective soul with the numinous and transformative power that comes from deep within. How many men have been called to battle by the archetype of the warrior or the hero? How many churches have been built on the foundation of the myth of redemption? The power of the archetypal, mythic world belongs to the river-beds of life that shape humanity.”