Arts and Crafts Hotel
Local artists got a huge boost as the State’s first-ever art and crafts hotel was opened by Hotel Palm Beach. The 60-year-old hotel inaugurated a new wing covered with traditional art forms of Andhra Pradesh like Tholu Bommalata (leather shadow puppetry), Budithi brass work, Kalamkari pen art, and Etikoppaka lacquer work. The 24 rooms of the hotel incorporated 70 sculptures and 50 art installations that were all made by city-based artists.
“There is so much power and beauty in local artwork. After a year, I can say with confidence that the hotel has managed to turn the spotlight on these art forms. Our guests have really taken interest in them as they have tried tounderstand their origins and relevance,” says Ameet Mirpuri, the interior designer of the hotel and also the founder-head of Design Studio.
Thirty artists from the city worked for over a year to create the artwork for the hotel. Ameet has been keen to rope in local artists in several of his projects. The city’s history unfolds on the walls of the recently-opened Harbour Vue of Hotel Novotel . The interiors are in sync with the local architecture that is generally associated with the fishing community, the port, the harbour and Dutch history. Says Ameet, “It is high time that we understand the importance of local art and work for its preservation. Even if we cannot use the art in its original form, it can always be blended into contemporary designs.”
Karma sutra
The year did not begin very well for artist Roja Sanchana. Her husband lost his eyesight at surgery. But she fuelled the truama and painted a series that was themed on karma. “The doctors told us that usually patients do not survive the infection that my husband had developed, but he lived through it and that made me think of karma,” she explains. Roja enjoys working on themes related to spirituality and conscience. She exhibited five paintings from this series at the Venkatappa Art Gallery in Bengaluru. A post-graduate in Fine Arts from Andhra University (AU) specialising in sculpture, she displayed four sculptures and an installation at New Delhi’s Lalit Kala Akademi. The sculptures were based on the life of a tailorbird and its meticulous ways of sewing a nest. “Like tailor birds we are all trying to stitch together the pieces of our life,” she says. One of the sculpture from this series showcases a woman rising from two leaves woven together. “The idea was to say that no matter how grave the problem is we always possess the energy to get over it,” she says. She also put up an installation of Mahatma Gandhi’s footprints on a bloodied path for the Fine Arts Department’s exhibition on October 2. “Gandhi advocated non-violence and those ideas are the need of the hour as the country is witnessing so much intolerance,” she adds.
Andhra University’s Fine Arts Department
Enter the premises and the clang of hammers and chisel welcome you. There is a week long workshop under way where students are learning the intricacies of wood sculpting. It has been an exciting year at the University as the Fine Arts Department has upped its game with many exciting initiatives.
- The Eastern Art Museum located at Sampath Vinayak Margh is selling 19 paintings made by the students of Sri Shanti Ashram - a home for deaf and dumb kids. The money raised through this will be given to the school for welfare work.
“The workshop is an attempt to introduce wood sculpting to students across the art disciplines. The idea is to make them the medium works and in what best ways it can be incorporated into their own work,” says Ravi Shankar Patnaik, associate professor in sculpting. In the following months there will be similar workshops focussing on terracotta, metal and so on. In a tribute to to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary, the Fine Arts department held a five-day art exhibition. Students used installations , sculptures, graphic prints and woodcut works, to creatively represent the essence of Gandhi’s thoughts. “Every year we have just one big exhibition that is the annual graduation show. It is only during that time that the students get to showcase their art works to the public. Adding more exhibitions will enable students to showcase and market their works better, ” says V Ramesh, artist and professor at the department.
Art for everyone
Artist K Ravi decided it was time the people enjoyed some street-side art and he recently organised an art bazaar on Beach Road. “For years I have been visiting Bengaluru’s Chitra Santhe (a street fair of art) and I was so eager to get it to Visakhapatnam. I proposed the idea of the bazaar to the students and the faculty of the Fine Arts Department and they readily agreed to participate,” says Ravi who teaches at the department.
Over 90 artists took part. “Of the 90 artists who participated, 60 were from the department while the rest 30 were homemakers and and corporate workers,” he says. Ravi himself is gearing up to display his paintings at art festivals in Goa and New Delhi. “This year I am experimenting with a new series that prominently feature lions, tigers and a female face. Lions and tigers symbolise power and authority and I believe women in our society should also be looked up to for the power that they possess.”
