From the Centre....

Wired at the Heart
52 Ceramic pieces

exhibited in Mumbai -2010

Moths & Butterflies : the Sun & the Moon...

Some of the best teaching sessions are after dinner at midnight! Unplanned, these occur as our students and artist's in residence bring their work over from the collective studio into the drawing room for what is meant to be a "quick-gun-mruggan-glance"! This of course is never the case, and what unfolds are these wonderful sessions in the muted zone of divided time, between a day past and a day yet to begin; of sharing and belief in the dreams of one another.

Baroda despite being a dry state, is party-land each day. BMW's and Suzuki Hayabusa's are an everyday sight on today's crowded roads of the city. Lavish lifestyles and burn outs go hand in hand with dhokla-culture and jallebies. My refusal to be part of this high spirited circuit when I returned in 1984 from London to make Baroda my home as an artist, was because I knew it would create a wasteland within my soul and boredom would paralyse my already tiny brain. Instead our home has always been a space where friends and loved ones can come to find peace and time to reflect with themselves. To read, to be embraced by positive attitudes, to regenerate a pulse of failing self-belief, to laugh, to cry, to be sheltered; or to just eat and feed the delight of togetherness with fun and laughter.

My spirit within my home is on call 24 X 7 and I would want it no other way. It can be exhaustive and I have my hair tearing moments too; but in the moments when I see nurtured energies translate into life changing spaces, it becomes the greatest reward to have found a space of contemplation that holds more than myself. I have some wonderful tributes of love which are not off a shelf but have been made or found, and delivered with exquisite tenderness. Only recently I received a cut-out paper doll with moving hands and legs.....!

Sometimes we all troop up to my studio before we disperse for the night, to look at my days work, or we pour over Surendran's lap top looking at visuals that have many stories that he narrates to us from the depths of his favourite chair in the drawing room; or we listen to snatches of music from his vast collection that holds us silent and transformed, and in tune with ourselves in magical ways that are infinitely precious. It is a life that is truly special and I feel so thankful to have known which road was mine to take on this journey.

Eat, Sleep, Laugh......!

I took off for a fun filled three days with friends to a place down south. I am no Julia Roberts but my new mantra in life is to find that small window of time in which to just hang loose and become a total idiot! In my daily life that is crammed with an assortment of roles, and work that should get me an Oscar if I was living it out on the silver screen; time takes on another meaning than what any dictionary defines it as, and so these interludes with friends who are as crazy as I am, becomes a great stress buster and relaxation for me.

The high light was pre-determined....NO AGENDAS!!!! So the day would begin with each of us munching through piles of food. My breakfast plate would be arranged with two steamed idlis with a variety of three chutneys, pork sausages & bacon on one side and two small pancakes with maple syrup on the broad rim of the plate! Do try sometime....very very yummy! A limited time of nothingness would then begin....with mad conversations that ranged from ragging each other to serious in your face conversations on culture and politics; and of course laughter in HUGE doses that were triggered by nothing that can concretely be recalled.....it would just happen....like a magic act from the hat of tricks, our funny bones were in overdrive!

Then it was lunch time.....! Eating can become rather like a devotional act for foodies!!!! Pleasure of renunciation and nirvana all in the circle of a plate!!!!! Many fervent proclamations about " a light bite" would occur before the rituals of ordering the food....and then the table would groan!!! We all devoured seafood as if we had been lost in the snow mountains of nowhere and had been living on ice and air to survive!!!! The route of travel of the food on the table from one plate to another, as bites were shared and portions were distributed, would have put a treasure hunt map-maker to shame with the amount of zig-zagging that occurred on a 4 X 2 rectangular space!!!!

Then would come the siesta zone. Mmmmmm! Even I succumbed....only I did it my way (Frank Sinatra would have liked that!!!).....sitting propped up in bed dozing over TV!!!!! High on the program of nothingness was the daily swim and steam session. Splash splash.....sweat sweat....waka-waka- yeahia-yeah...decadence thy name is holidaying!!!!

Now of course after you swim you are Hungry with a capital H!!!! So need I say more. The table would groan again whilst we would sit in a shack on the beach and be surrounded by the pure magic of the sea lapping the shore, the moon high in the sky and the delight of being footloose and fancy free!!!! My imaginative mind had Johnny Dep walking out of the sea towards me....pirate of the sea and all............!!!!!!

Back in my studio my blue tiger roars silently at me for leaving the two-tailed beauty unattended for these days. Begum however rubs herself knowingly on my ankles understanding the luxury that nothingness is sometimes truly divine!

Tiger-Tiger burning bright.....

I am taming a tiger in my space! Well when the Artiger project team sent me this rather clumsily executed seated fibre glass tiger I was rather nonplussed as I had assumed that it would be a standing tigress! Well my tiger was all male (!) and so the first thing I did was to snip off the manhood of this poor beast!!! Suffice to say a beautiful pink second tail grew in its place over night!

Pukkaar billi-billi . The work slowly transforms and as I sit writing my blog the blue tiger with pink oriental lilies painted on its spine, guards me from its perch with wide eyed intensity and new found elegance!

Chatting with my gallerist this morning I spoke about how I wished there were more spaces of experimentation for artists in India. Where physical spaces could become sites that were intervened with, rather than have art only as objects of adornment as is the case most often. Corporate offices, banks, hospitals, airports, railway stations, private homes.....the list is long, the possibilities infinite. Ceilings, walls, staircases, windows, floors, basins......anything.....everything; just waiting to be transformed!

When the Bombay international airport was being "artified" I was approached to give a work of art that was to be "hung" on a wall. The terms and conditions of engagement were so unprofessional, that such ideas become spaces of charity instead of venues that can truly do something outstanding and genuine. The consideration of the safety of the work, the ownership, etc was just swept under the carpet with the usual explanation that "the budget" doesn't accommodate these factors. Ah well!!! Chalta hai India jai ho!

A young friend who owns a hotel in Baroda spoke about her interest of creating a small collection of art within the hotel premises that showcases Baroda art. What one hopes is that the bartering mentality that believes bargaining is essential when acquiring art, does not interface into this idea, because then quality and history gets automatically compromised, which is truly such a pity.

Today I have ten kilos of rose petals drying in my studio, remnants from the presentation of my ceramic art work Wired at the heart ....let's see what surprises I can conjure for myself from the magic hat of my own imagination !!!

Peek-a-boo!

Yesterday the Ceramic Centre Vadodara held a preview at the Red Earth Gallery in Baroda of it's 10th anniversary celebration show. This exhibition is scheduled to open in Mumbai on the 11th of October 2010, at Art& Soul Gallery, in Mumbai. These images are the presentation of my work titled Wired at the Heart at the preview yesterday.

Catching up.....

My teaching in Bangalore at the CKP painting department was a lovely interlude of four days, with thirteen young people who are all at exciting thresholds of their lives and learning that the key to their freedom is really in their own hands. The optimism with which I approach teaching is a strategy that obliges me to contribute my energies and apply myself to insisting that every student I ever engage with, must believe in themselves. In this lies the potential of a bigger dream which is what it is all about eventually.

Whilst in Bangalore I caught the 25th anniversary show of Sakshi Gallery. This show was a representation of all their main Indian artists and the works on the walls were like old friends gathered together in celebration! My own journey with Sakshi Gallery is twenty years old, and till date it is a precious and special relationship that holds mutual respect, and common agendas and values; which is the real bond within this unique affiliation we have all these years.

I returned to Baroda to a waiting and not sleeping tiger! A project conceived by ARTIGER that invites artists to work on a sculpted fibre glass tiger, these works of art will then be on view in different public locations all over India for four months. These art works will then be auctioned and the entire proceeds will go to the campaign of saving our Indian tiger. So presently a rather majestic seated tiger gazes at all who enter my studio, and the process of transformation through my intervention, is hopefully the magic in the making! Simultaneous to this, 52 ceramic hearts that I have conceived are being fired and glazed in the Ceramic Centre located in the Gorva industrial estate of Baroda. I have the most dedicated facilitators for this ceramic project, who quite literally have put their own lives on hold, to hold my heart in their hands! The joy of these two projects is that it allows me to wander into spaces of thinking through new devices of deliverance, which for those who know me, is something I delight and revel in.

I also recently delivered a lecture Women Artists of India : Voices of Strength at the Women's Study Centre in the Faculty of Family and Community Sciences. A small room packed with an attentive audience made the effort of finding those extra hours in my schedule to honour this commitment, truly worth while. I am presently working on a short presentation for a forum at CEPT in Ahmadabad where I have been invited to talk about the process of an work from it's inception to its place within a public domain. So once again I am connected to a deadline that is looming rather ominously at me!

Yesterday was daughters day! My spiritual daughters fill my space with the radiance of their energy and empowerment all the year round, and my adopted grand-daughter Aditi becomes more special each day that she grows. One of my spiritual daughters came to my studio with a bunch of ivory white roses at dusk and said " I just wanted to give this to you". Whilst watching each of them unobserved as they live in the collective we have in our home, I know the power of nurtured energies and the benefit of optimism as a gift to another.

Yeah-e-Yeah!!!!

I have horrified my son over the last few years by having It's the time to Disco as my ring tone! To make matters worse, I have my ring tones at a decibel level that is ear shattering and it has often been the trigger of cringing sessions in public for my family, as this Bollywood masala tune would pop up when least expected; and my phone would invariably choose in such moments to bury itself in my bag as though it wanted to play the game of treasure-hunt with me! I was a loyal and devoted fan of this phone jingle but then..... Shakira wiggled her way into my life! I was hooked and smitten in the blink of an eye!!!!

Now not being so tech savvy I guess I missed my chance of getting into the Waka-waka mode at the right time (typical!), and then suddenly all the Waka-waka ring tone people become snooty snobs (!!!) who would watch me salivate and jiggle in my chair like a wind-up toy with a malfunctioning battery, as the Waka-waka chorus would activate my dance system into action! Bobbing like a melting jello was beginning to become the next cringing moment for my friends and family and so the "save my mother's image campaign" was secretly started by my son. However what he managed to download for me as I quivered in anticipatory delight believing I had hit the music jack-pot was not my Waka-waka refrain ..... and so John Travolta and the disco nostalgia remained the order of my existence uninterrupted.

And then voila! On my return from my Nair wedding experience yellow sari and all, I had my mobile spirited away by one of our spiritual children, the moment I got back from the airport. In the flurry of activity that rules our home it isn't anything unusual for the children to use my things, so I thought nothing of it......and THEN......Waka-Waka.......!!!!!! So I am now an official convert!!! Therefore be prepared, the next time you meet me I will wiggle up to you and do a namaste ala Ms. Shakira ishtyle, so don't be too surprised! It is called multi-cultualism!!!

Now there is a new cringing moment for the family.....I don't immediately answer my phone when it rings. Instead I bob about furiously to my Waka-waka tune and only when dancy-dancy need feels fulfilled, I answer the call. The silent horror and embarrassment of my family is studiously ignored by me!

Well I have one life and bob and dancy-dancy I must , so bare with it but don't you DARE grin!!!