Ceramic sculpting and pottery may be described as a perfectly imperfect result of a culmination of shapes, colours and textures, brought together through some fine techniques, materials, and balance of chemistry. And that explains the reason why Leena Batra chose to call her recently concluded solo ceramic exhibition “Perfectly-Imperfect”. Her sculptures were on display at the India Habitat Centre.
Leena hails from Leningrad in Russia but has made India home for the past 47 years. Her works epitomise impassioned spontaneity, but one borne out of a natural knack for pottery and dedicated learning.
She chats excitedly about the transition from being an interpreter (she is a professional interpreter in English, Hindi, and Urdu) for the Trade Commission to going to Jingdezhen, the porcelain capital of China where she was a resident, in a world of clay and kilns, and firing, baking and glazing.
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“It’s like a dreamland. It’s got a beautiful studio and every facility imaginable. They have little workshops around the studio and artists from just about everywhere around the world prepare their entire exhibition there and ship it to their respective countries.”
“Perfectly-Imperfect” took about two years of hard work. “You make a piece and it looks beautiful, but when you put it on an exhibition, you don’t know if it will gel in with the flow of the show. I also try to display as few pieces as possible, because it’s a three dimensional work which should have ample space around it for a person to see it in its wholeness,” she confides.
The exhibition has several sections depending on the ‘firing’ techniques the pieces have been crafted out of. Leena points out the porcelain, stoneware, and woodware pieces. A few have been formulated out of the ‘Raku’ technique, one where the firing differs from others and result in porous vessels. The low temperature ‘glazing’ on them conjure unprecedented visual effects.
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In others, she has done Obvara firing, which brings together yeast, sugar and maida.
Trying to describe her personal style, she says, “It's a little unusual that the reception here has been very good, because my porcelain designs are not very ‘Indian’. I know if I tried to do something Indian, it will be fake, because it’s different to the way I feel and the way I see things!”
All of her porcelain work was born out of China due to lack of adequate facilities in India, but a few were made here at the Delhi Blue Ceramic Centre in the Capital.