August 4, 2009

Joan Krejcar Sharma, an associate professor in the Department of Art and Design at California State University, Fresno, has published a collection of photographs and text illuminating Mithila artists in northeastern India.

“Madhubani”, a 50-page, large-format book filled with images, is published by Blurb and available for purchase on their Web site at Blurb.com.

Sharma has traveled extensively throughout India. She and her husband, Brijesh Sharma, led a travel-study trip in 2006-07 offered by Fresno State’s Division of Continuing and Global Education during which she photographed extensive examples of the area’s historical monuments, people and traditional art. They are planning a travel/workshop with artists in Madhubani during winter 2010-11.

Religious, mythological and natural themes and subjects are the focus of most of the work, which dates to ancient times. While media have changed over the years, much of the difference in styles springs from the sociocultural variance.

Sharma has mounted numerous exhibitions of her abstract paintings and photographs from her travels in Fresno, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area museums and galleries.

She also is an artist, and her work is in private and public collections and has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally.

For more information or to purchase “Madhubani,” click here.