Don is off to the operating room and the sun is shining, and we have something of a free morning, so the kids and I walk and then grab a taxibus to the eastern neighborhood of Thimphu, where there is the National Library (we save this for another day), and the Traditional Painting School, a high school for artists in training. Public schooling goes to the 8th grade, and then there are academic, vocational, and other kinds of specialized high schools by competitive admission. At the Traditional Painting School, students train to produce religious statuary, decorative carved panels of wood or slate, tankha paintings, embroidered silk panels for handmade yak-felt boots, metalwork bowls and religious objects, etc, in a four-year program. Also they learn to produce the exquisite building adornments that make every surface special - here is a small prayer-wheel house in the Botanical Garden, an "ordinary" sight here with all its wonderful detailed paintwork.
The first workshop we see with an open door turns out to be the woodworking shop. Four or five young men are at work making screwdrivers. They have blacksmithed iron nails into straight screwdriver points, have set the blades into a block of wood, and are using a sharp machete to carve the handles. We are attracted to a workbench of 12" square dark slate panels, each with a carving in progress of a seated Buddha or a lotus flower. One young man comes over and spends quite some time with us, explaining how to transfer the design onto the slate and then he shows us how to carve it with the corner of a sharp chisel, gently tapping the back of the chisel with a wooden mallet, and slowly carving out the edge of a delicate flower petal. He even gives us a piece of scrap slate to practice on at home.
From there we peek into the statuary workshop: complicated, very detailed hero or demon images are being made in what looks like clay, but no one looks up to talk to us, so we quietly move on.
We climb a flight of steps into another building and encounter a drawing class. This is a class of 4th year students, preparing for their exams on July 7th, hard at work drafting the multi-armed hero and his consort whose name I can't remember just now. To draft this image takes careful measurement. Tankha painting is very precise: the proportions and the measurement are extremely important in making the final product look correct and pleasing. These students can sketch anything, all in the same flowing style, with little individualization of the artwork (of course this is a completely different mindset about artisitic production than in the West). Their instructor is not in the room at present. One young man tells me that they work at their desks from 9-12 with one bathroom break, and then again from 1-4, and they stay at a "hostel" next to the school... they have come from all over the country to study here and the work is obviously very rigorous. But they are glad of the diversion that our little family provides, and they let us sit at the vacant desks and draw. He digs in the drawer of his desk and comes up with a couple of images of the Guru Rinpoche, a common tankha subject, and a couple of pencils, and Jacob and Forrest set to work copying the images with remarkable detail. To amuse Halle, he draws in the curious stylized manner a deer, a dog, and a lotus flower (the pema). This is a quiet interlude; we are in no hurry to leave, and the students are entertained by the children's serious and careful attention to making copies of the Guru.
After some time, we drift into a classroom across the hall, where two girls are doing the tiniest embroidery I have ever seen - beautiful phoenixes and flowing flowers - without any hoops.
In the nearby shops, which sell the student work, we ask about where to purchase thick handmade paper, paints, and brushes, but we are told we have to go back downtown for those items. Later that afternoon we find the art shop, tucked into a handicraft gallery in the clock tower plaza, and we buy little sets of watercolors for 21Nu and fine animal-hair brushes, and the rest of the afternoon is spent pleasantly in the guest house with Jamtsho and our kids making paintings and drawings using the new paints and the watercolor sets we have brought from home. Jacob copies another image of the Guru and tries to master the "endless knot," a Buddhist symbol that looks like an angular Celtic knot, symbolizing the union of wisdom and compassion. Jamtsho shows the boys how to fold origami flowers and Halle paints lots of rainbows. We have drying paintings sitting on every horizontal surface in the living room.
