Imagine a garden with flowers and sculptures along the banks of the Grand Canal which runs through Puducherry’s Boulevard area. Canadian sculptor and artist Robert Lorrain feels the site is ideal, recalling his own hometown of St. Jean-sur-Richelieu in Quebec, Canada, where the Chambly Canal runs by flanked by gardens. “The Mother gave importance to flowers. If my sculpture can bring something beautiful to Puducherry, it will be good,” says Mr. Lorrain, who has been a follower of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. A beautiful sculpture appeals to the spirit, he says, on the sidelines of a two-day workshop he led as part of the ‘Self-Portrait Bonanza’ exhibition at Tasmai last weekend. Participants learnt to model and carve in soft bee wax and paraffin, which will be cast in bronze later.
Mr. Lorrain visited Auroville in the 1960s, but returned to Canada owing to the climate. He continued his association with Auroville, opening a restaurant after receiving acknowledgement from The Mother. He was also associated with the Centre Creatif L'elan, a communal space for young people, managing a shop with products from the Ashram and Auroville.
He returned to his passion of art, and today his works in materials like bronze and cast iron can be found in Canada and China. Mr. Lorrain is currently experimenting with styrofoam, a flexible and interesting medium according to him.
For those in Auroville, his bronze work, ‘l’Offrande’ (The Offering), installed around 2005 at the Town Hall, is a familiar sight.
The work is said to be inspired from multiple sources like Michelangelo and the Inuit of Canada to art forms of Hinduism, and is a search for harmony, form and aspiration.
Mr. Lorrain presently travels around the world in pursuance of his art, and visits Puducherry at least once a year.
If my sculpture can bring something beautiful to Puducherry, it will be good. — Robert Lorrain
