"Language in the Tall Grasses" Kite by Michael Thompson

Chicago-based artist Michael Thompson creates unique kites crafted from split bamboo frames covered with stretched muslin and a collage of vintage Asian ephemera—including fragments of fabric, scrolls, drawings, and books collected during his travels. In this work titled “Language in the Tall Grasses,” Thompson pays homage to the ancient arts of calligraphy and ink brush painting. Fragments of Chinese script and a traditional "shan shui" landscape painting form an underlying layer, stained with free-flowing watercolor to unite the paper remnants as a singular visual field. Like clouds rolling in across the surface, irregular layers of rice paper obscure the imagery below, re-imagining the vertical lines of Chinese text as tall grasses swaying in the wind.

Thompson has earned an international reputation for his kite works, an engrossing project initiated by the artist more than a decade ago.