Every Day Is Special: miniatures

Showing posts with label miniatures. Show all posts

January 18 – Happy Birthday, OTGO

Posted on January 18, 2017

If you were a painter with the name Otgonbayar Ershuu, you too might choose to shorten it as you dash your signature across one corner of your canvas.

OTGO, born on this date in 1981 in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, loved painting at an early age and started having his own solo shows at the incredibly young age of 15! He studied traditional Mongolian painting in college, but he had to learn Mongolian miniature painting on his own, as no school offered a course on the craft.

OTGO spent years crossing his beloved home country, taking part in a lot of different cultural and social projects and creating hundreds of images. But now he lives in Berlin (Germany) and has shown his work internationally all over the world, from Japan to France and from Moldova to India.

This is an example of Mongolian miniature painting. The piece is just 20 x 27 cm (about 8 inches by 10 inches), painted with tempura on cotton.

Some of OTGO's work is a LOT bigger.

This piece, called "Hun," depicts more than

11 THOUSAND animals and people!

Here are some more OTGO pieces:

Antarctica

Autumn

Paradise

Roaring Hoofs-31

Also on this date:

Birthday of sound engineer Ray Dolby

Inventor Joseph Dixon's birthday

Lima Foundation Day

Thesaurus Day

Winnie the Pooh Day

(aka A. A. Milne's birthday!)

Plan ahead:

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February holidays
February birthdays
Historical anniversaries in February

January 25 – Alasitas Fair in Bolivia

Posted on January 25, 2014

This South American fair is a celebration of the miniature. It is a festival of prosperity and abundance.

And it is a very, very old tradition!

Before Bolivia was an independent nation, before it was a Spanish colony, before it was part of the Incan Empire, it was the Tiwanakan Empire of the Aymara people. And one of the gods was Ekeko, a little man with a big belly and a pack on his back. During this festival, figures of Ekeko are on sale—statues showing the god with his mouth open and his arms spread wide, ready to spread good luck.

Also on sale are miniatures of all sorts – teeny houses and baby dolls, little replicas of clothing and food, tiny pots and pans, itsy-bitsy cars and university diplomas, and miniature replicas of almost anything you could think of!

Especially popular: mini-money! Of course there are a lot of tiny replicas of dollar bills and Bolivianos (the currency of the nation).

People buy miniatures of the real items that they want in the coming year, and they put them into Ekeko's pack! (A variation involves a statue wearing a handwoven poncho; the miniature items are pinned to the poncho.)

By the way, the name of the fair, Alasitas, is the Aymaran word for “buy from me.” It is what merchants call out to attract people to buy their miniatures, their Ekeko figurines, or their full-sized food or handicrafts. There are also lots of carnival games and rides to enjoy at the fair!

I love miniatures!

If I were ever to travel to Bolivia, I would love to go during the Alasitas Fair. It would be so fun to buy handcrafted items in miniature, don't you think? Easier to display than full-sized items, too!

Here in the U.S., most people who are into miniatures often either build and furnish dollhouses or play war games.

I have been to at least two miniature museums—a FANTASTIC one in Los Angeles that is, sadly, no longer in existence, and the amazing Old West Miniature Village and Museum in Cody, Wyoming. I make a few miniature scenes with small-scale Christmas decorations every year. So much fun!

Also on this date: