Tuesday, March 31, 2009

How was the exhibition?

In the month of September '08, when father was here in Sydney, I had started wondering what if I put up an exhibition of father's paintings, drawn during his trip. My husband gave many ideas on overall how the paintings should be in order to be exhibitable. I thought of few ideas on where to exhibit, either at my place or at Padhye's residence or at one of the council halls nearby. Our close buddies Rashmi and Rajesh Padhye had happily offered their residence to be used for exhibition purposes. I just kept thinking until it final struck me that father's date of return will be approaching soon. Since invitations had to go out ahead of time, I checked with Rashmi again, and she asserted and said - "Don't worry, we can defnitelty do the exhibition at our residence". Then many activties started at fast track- creating invites, planning for snacks, arranging for the bluetak, categorising the paintings, numbering them and what not.

The day arrived, 26th Oct '08. We all at home and at Padhye's residence finally managed the show. Many guests came in, apprecaited our efforts. We had not kept sale as our objective of the exhibition, still a few sales occured which was welcoming. In retrospect, we could have planned better, created more large size paintings (than smaller size) considering the audience requirements. At the same time, we did best of ourselves. Rajesh did a bit of video shoots with his new camcoder and the memories will now remain with us forever.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

What is the Origin of Warli Art?

The Warli or Varli are aboriginal or indigenous people who live in certain parts of India, primarily states of Maharashtra and Gujarat. They have their own beliefs, life and customs and they speak an unwritten Varli language mingling Sanskrit, Marathi and Gujarati words. The word Warli is derived from warla, meaning "piece of land" or "field". They carry a tradition stretching back to 2500 or 3000 BC. Warli art has become well known worldwide over the years for its universal aesthetic appeal.

Warli paintings use very basic graphic vocabulary: circle, triangle, line and square. Circle representing the sun and the moon, triangle derived from mountains and pointed trees. Only square seems to obey a different logic and seems to be a human invention, indicating sacred enclosure or a piece of land. Most of the Wali paintings depict simple village scenes such as farming, wedding, dances, prayers etc. I personally love warli paintings for their simplicity.

My Special Precious Corner



Thanks to blogger, I finally got a small "space" on Internet where I can write about me, in the context of "Creations" - my big/small venture. I mean it's small right now, and I dream of making something big out it, not just for monetary reasons but also in terms of touching people's lives, giving them little joy through our collection, helping them make their gifts to loved ones stand special. I am glad to be from the family of family and friends who are equally (in fact even more) addicted to art as me.

Well, basically I am a computer engineer by education, always enjoyed logic, engineering drawing, boolean algebra and gates. Human mind and its amazing power always fascinates me. Excellence is my pursuit. I am certified NLP Practitioner. My experience as Business Analyst and as Business Process Management consultant helped me learn business aspects in their own rights. This is the first time through "Creations" I am applying those for myself though. It's fun and at the same time it's a challenge. There is nobody like "they" now who doesn't do things right. Nevertheless it's an interesting journey I must say- writing my experiences, working on promotions at etsy, listing the products, describing them from buyer's perspective, taking photographs of the products and last but not the least- to see orders and to strive to provide best value for money to my customers.

When I first thought of setting up an art shop? Well, I will have to go back into the timeline and make a transderivational search :-) My father attended an exhibition on Warli paintings (alias: Varli, folk or aboriginal art, from Indian tribal areas). I was excited to discover this new form of art. I was intrigued by seeing those precise little characters working in their villages, dancing, celebrating. They didnt have "real faces" and at the same time they were so representative of human life. I drew a few myself, well I had given certain well recognized drawing exams during schooling and I did enjoy preparing and learning for those. Since then amongst all forms of art, Warli paintings became my "top favourite" ones. And then I believe they have universal aesthetic appeal too.

So it all started with Warlis and now I am here, still interested in taking father's art (and possibly many artists work) ahead for its apt recognition worldwide. Our scope now is not only limited to Warli though.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Artists Corner


He has been living his entire life drawing paintings and is dedicated to art in general. Chintaman Rudra (my father), after completion of degree in art from JJ School of art, Mumbai, started working as an artist in a well known government office in Mumbai, while simultaneously working as freelance artist for various firms. His rich experience of over forty years encompasses various forms of arts and commercial work such as busienss logos, greeting cards etc. In Oct 2008, he created a great set of paintings for our informal exhibition in Sydney. Here is the picture of "work in progress" from exhibition time..Life has taken an interesting turn post retirement for him..Earlier slightly dull looking (thinking that he is "retired now") Mr Rudra is now excited about innovations he can bring into his paintings. He is also excited about the online shop (creations1000.etsy.com). Well, not just excited he is amused to see a few his paintings being sold on internet by worldwide buyers. More about exhibition and other fun things..in a separate blog post.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

What do we passionately create?

At 'Creations - The Art Shop' we create variety of abstract, folk and nature paintings and some specialized Indian form of handmade art here. Our paintings are canvas or paper based and uses acrylic or oil colors. We have a wide range of products based on as pricing, quality of material used and creative value gone into it. We cherish vibrant colours and we cherish the value we provide to our font-of-handmade-art buyers.

We also accept custom orders, say your want specific design of your choice, or you want our design made with your specific requirement on size, material (canvas/paper), colors, special effects (like 3 D effect). We also design business logos and accept orders for the same.

What is there in name? Creations..

As I get more and more insight into human nature, I realiase that all these human minds and after seeking creations, creating creations and thus growing. What is one of the greatest pursuits of human lives..guess it's to continue to create. And the scope of this phrase 'to create' is so vast that it encomasses almost every area of our lives- creating houses, creating great food, creating artistic artifacts, creating work, creating pottery, creating 'thoughtlessness', creating photographs, creating music, creating silence, creating toys and creating friendships..What is the difference between making and creating then? Taking a closer look at these, creations involve passion whereas making is more process oriented. I want our work to depict the force of passion, hence the name Creations. I can always technically "make" food, but the food created with passion is "felt" for sure.