100 Days of Teabag Art
As an artist, I love playing and experimenting with new, unconventional and non-traditional media as well as canvases. The way I approach. my life as an artist is that ‘I’ll draw on any and all surfaces.’ I started this 100 day project as a part of my own artistic process and discipline to challenge and measure the extents of my work—to test my boundaries and make art in a way that isn’t in my comfort zone. This project was birthed from one such desire to be comfortably uncomfortable.
Working on this miniature scale with a porous material like a used tea bag helps me focus on precision and lends a higher control of the techniques I use and learn in my everyday art making process. While a heavy chai connoisseur, I don’t always consume a lot of black tea. When I started this project, people have been kind enough to collect their dried tea bags and mail them to (oh, how I appreciate these lil’ canvases’ journeys!).
I started the project in late 2017, took a few detours and hit a few bumps before I finished it in February 2023. I believe there was one point where I didn’t do any tea bag pieces for periods of 7-8 months at a stretch. Initially I did a lot of watercolors and ink, then moved to gouache which seems like a fantastic paint medium for this canvas. Much of these pieces have already been sold across my first solo art show and some others down the road… it makes me very happy to see it go to live different lives in different people’s homes. Even though I feel slightly bad that I took much longer to finish this series than I initially intended, I am glad I finished it at all. It brings me so much joy and I intend on constantly doing more of these under the same hashtag (#100DaysofTeabagArtByHemu). Feel free to follow me/the hashtag on Instagram at @hemuvenkat.
