M.T. Joseph says, as a father, he would like to shout from his rooftop and tell people of his son Edmund Thomas Clint’s genius. “I can’t, of course, people will haul me away saying I have gone mad. Sometimes it is as if his time with us was a beautiful dream.” It’s been 32 years since Clint passed away but for his parents, Joseph and Chinnamma, he lives on.
For a long time, preserving around 25,000 of his paintings was a preoccupation for the septuagenarian Joseph. He even spent a considerable amount of money on these, going through his savings in the bargain, “mind you, I don’t see it as a loss.” Somewhere along the way, he just stopped. This year everything changes. Thiruvananthapuram-based Invis Multimedia, along with two other companies, has formed a consortium which has developed Clint memorabilia – souvenirs with reproductions of Clint’s works - coffee mugs, prints, coasters, bags, colouring books, picture postcards, fridge magnets and T-shirts.
Joseph and Chinnamma couldn’t be happier. “All these years nothing was working out. There were several attempts to ‘preserve’ his works and his memory but none met a logical conclusion. Anyway most of it was just talk. We decided we’ll look after the works as long as we live and after that…”
These ‘attempts’ included a documentary film and digitisation of the paintings. There are others that bore fruition, but nothing that would preserve his works. That is until this project.
Last year, in 2014, the Kerala State Tourism Department conducted a painting competition which took Clint to the world. The Children’s Biennale has a dedicated venue, Cosmopolitan Cult (Mattancherry) to exhibit his works. As all this was happening, without much fanfare or noise, Invis Multimedia, a digital and electronic publishing firm, was digitising each drawing by Clint, drawing by drawing.
When the process is complete these will be uploaded on a dedicated website, ensuring immortality for Clint’s works. The project’s tagline salutes the prodigy’s life - ‘It is not how long you live, it is how you live that matters.’
“Technology has developed to such a great extent that this kind of conservation is possible. Without the technology available today I doubt we could have achieved this,” says M.R. Hari, managing director of the company. Hari sees this as more of a social venture, an attempt to take Clint outside Kerala and keep his memory alive.
The picture postcards and prints are already available at the Children’s Biennale. The next set of mementos – T-shirts and fridge magnets will be available next week and later this month, the coffee mugs too. The mugs are being made in Khurja, Uttar Pradesh. In his search for collaborators, Hari travelled to different parts of the country with Clint’s drawings. “People had no clue about this boy. They were wonderstruck by his works.”
The consortium plans to set up kiosks, a ‘Clint Corner’, dedicated to Clint at bookstores, hotels, airports and similar spaces in order to market the merchandise. All the products are copyrighted to Joseph and Chinnamma.
A colouring book, ‘Learn Colouring with Clint’, is a series of 10 books with sketches by Clint.
“The colouring book would encourage little children to think out of the box…that everything is not about perfection and symmetry. They might learn to appreciate a certain degree of whimsicality,” Hari says.
He adds that the team has used good quality products be it the T-shirts, the reproductions or the picture postcards. The reproductions are priced at Rs. 400 per painting and a set of six comes up to Rs. 2,400, a set of 10 postcards is priced at Rs. 150, T-shirts at Rs.500 and the magnets at Rs.60 and Rs.100 (depending on the size).
Joseph and Chinamma, in the past, were wary of giving Clint’s works for exhibitions, worried about the safety of the works. Over the years their attitude has changed and Joseph agrees. “This project inspired confidence. Initially when Hari contacted me, I was sceptical. We were won over by his commitment. We felt this would work.”
Anything to do with their son, Chinnamma says, is a source of happiness. With the digitisation of his works and the memorabilia they believe, “The world will now know our son.”
