Ambassadors of Folk: Connecticut Master Traditional Artists - Jampa Tsondue
SubjectPortrait of
Jampa Tsondue
(Tibetan, born 1959)
SubjectPortrait of
Yeshi Dorjee
(Tibetan, born 1959)
SubjectPortrait of
Kunga Choekyi
(Tibetan)
Date2010
Mediumborn digital images
ClassificationsGraphics
Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections
CopyrightIn Copyright
Object number2015.196.247.1-.5
Description2015.196.247.1: born digital image showing Tibetan thangka painter Jampa Tsondue with his family visiting the Ambassadors of Folk: Connecticut Master Traditional Artists exhibit at the Institute for Community Research. L to R: daughter Yangchen, Jampa, Yeshi Dorjee, Jampa’s mother, Kunga Choekyi. Behind them are three Tibetan thangkas on healing arts ink, natural pigments, colloidal gold on prepared cotton canvas, 2008-2009.
2015.196.247.2: born digital image showing Yeshi Dorjee and Jampa Tsondue viewing the exhibit. Behind them on the left: Shengzhu Chen's Chinese textiles. Behind them on the right: Aldona Saimininkas' Lithuanian arts.
2015.196.247.3: born digital image showing Kunga Choekyi looking at Shengzhu Chen's Chinese textiles. Romulo Chanduvi's Peruvian carved balcony is at the left.
2015.196.247.4: born digital image showing Kunga Choekyi and Jampa looking at Aldona Saimininkas' Lithuanian painted eggs.
2015.196.247.5: born digital image showing Kunga Choekyi looking at Aldona Saimininkas' Lithuanian straw mobile.
NotesSubject Note: "Ambassadors of Folk: Connecticut Master Traditional Artists" was an exhibit presented at the Institute for Community Research in Hartford, Connecticut, from June 10 through October 2010.2015.196.247.2: born digital image showing Yeshi Dorjee and Jampa Tsondue viewing the exhibit. Behind them on the left: Shengzhu Chen's Chinese textiles. Behind them on the right: Aldona Saimininkas' Lithuanian arts.
2015.196.247.3: born digital image showing Kunga Choekyi looking at Shengzhu Chen's Chinese textiles. Romulo Chanduvi's Peruvian carved balcony is at the left.
2015.196.247.4: born digital image showing Kunga Choekyi and Jampa looking at Aldona Saimininkas' Lithuanian painted eggs.
2015.196.247.5: born digital image showing Kunga Choekyi looking at Aldona Saimininkas' Lithuanian straw mobile.
Curated by the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program, the exhibit showcased the artistry of Connecticut folk and traditional artists who have achieved recognition on a national or international scale. The exhibit brought to wider attention the mastery of local artists who are highly respected exemplars of ethnic traditions within their communities. The eight visual artists and two performers featured represent a wide variety of artistic genres and ethnicities and share a high degree of technical skill and sophistication. The artists’ accomplishments represent entire lives spent serving their communities through cultural production.
Artists included Aldona Saimininkas, East Hartford; Romulo Chanduvi, East Hartford; Jampa Tsondue, Old Saybrook; Eldrid Arntzen, Watertown; Paul Luniw, Terryville; Valentine and Aili Galasyn, Canterbury; Shengzhu Chen Bernardin, Torrington; Marek Czarnecki, Meriden; performers Negrura Peruana, East Hartford and Daniel Boucher, Bristol.
Art forms exhibited drew from roots in Lithuania, Peru, Tibet, Norway, Ukraine, Finland, China, and Eastern Europe, but were all made and used here in Connecticut and beyond. One unifying characteristic is that these pieces have been created for use in a community’s traditional practices. For example, the Buddhist thangka paintings and the Byzantine Christian icons encourage active veneration, they serve a purpose beyond being paintings to be viewed. Other forms on display include decorative containers, cloth, commemorative pictures and rugs, wood carvings, and important seasonal decorations such as two types of dyed and etched Easter eggs. Performance traditions originate from African Peru and Québec. All of the art forms are beloved in the artists’ communities in Connecticut, where they serve as important expressions of cultural identity and heritage.
This exhibit celebrated the twenty years that the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program has worked with these and other remarkable traditional artists and their communities across the state.
Subject Note for 2015.196.247.1: This series of traditional thangkas discusses understandings important to Tibetan medicine, and shows how Buddhism works with natural methods of healing stress in body and mind. Buddhism has very specific teachings about how a person can promote healing from within, but these teachings are not often depicted.
Left: Wheel of Life. This depiction of the various realms of cyclic existence and the beings inhabiting these realms is a visual aid to help us gain a clear understanding of the working of our mind. The wheel is divided into twelve segments, each corresponding to a link in the chain or an aspect of life.Starting at bottom left: Ignorance; Action; Consciousness; Name and Form; Six Sources; Contact; Feeling; Craving; Grasping; Existence; Birth; Aging and Death.
Center: Illustration of Meditation. Showing the process of achieving successful meditation, which encompasses clarity (mindfulness) and stability (alertness). There are six courses of the path to meditation, nine mental states, five hindrances to mental quiescence, and four types of mental process. These are outlined in the writing on the frame.
Right: Medicine Buddha. By meditating on this aspect of Buddha we can experience an increase in healing and a decrease in physical and mental suffering. The healing master is in meditation mudra and holds a bowl filled with medicine nectar and fruit. His right hand faces outward in the mudra of granting blessings. He holds a myrobalan plant, considered king among medicines because of its effectiveness in treating both mental and physical diseases.
Biographical Note: Jampa Tsondue was born in 1959 just after his parents arrived in India, having left their farmland in Shigatse near Lhasa. Settling in Darjeeling, the family was visited by a monk-painter who noticed Jampa's talent. After school each day from the age of thirteen Jampa took art lessons from this teacher, Ngawang Norbu. Later Jampa moved south to Mysore to become an apprentice to this famous painter at the Gyudmed Tantric University, studying techniques of thangka painting for five years. The bond between master teacher and student can become very strong, almost familial. Jampa worked with his teacher, who also lived with the family, for the next fifteen years. Together they accepted commissions for thangka paintings, murals, and restoration of old art works. Their most important project took four painters nearly four years to complete - recreating forty-one thangkas in the Dalai Lama's collection, each 4 feet by 3 feet, depicting the past lives of the Buddha.
In 1992, Jampa was chosen by lottery to come to America with 1,000 Tibetans, and he settled in Old Saybrook where he still lives. Although working and raising three children, Jampa has completed several thangkas in America although each requires a long process; he does not make them for sale. Every Tibetan has a home altar, and Jampa has created an altar in his house where his thangkas are used by his family for meditation. He has been very active in the Tibetan Association of Connecticut, a social organization that serves the nearly 500 Tibetans that have settled in Connecticut (growing from the 21 who came in 1992). Jampa participates in community gatherings to celebrate Losar, New Year, and the Dalai Lama’s birthday. In February 2007, Jampa’s paintings and drawings were on display at Wesleyan University, at the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, organized by Patrick Dowdey, curator and professor at the Freeman Center. Jampa also did a demonstration of thangka painting there. This was his first exhibition in many years, and his first solo exhibit. Exhibitions and demonstrations featuring Jampa’s work have taken place at Trinity College, Hartford, the "Ambassadors of Folk: Connecticut Master Traditional Artists" exhibit at the Institute for Community Research in Hartford, the "Auspicious Signs: Tibetan Arts in New England" exhibition also at ICR, and an exhibit at the Connecticut Office of the Arts Gallery that celebrated 25 years of the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program. Jampa has taught his daughter Yangzom to create thangkas. In 2015, Jampa received a Folk Arts Fellowship from the Connecticut Office of the Arts.
Additional materials for this artist and this exhibit exist in the CCHAP archive.
Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.
Status
Not on view
Jampa Tsondue
2018 March 10
Kunga Choekyi
2016 July 6