Collage- The start of my journey and how I do it

How I started working in collage, and how I do what I do:

Collage is one my favorite medium - or challenge to expression. Done with a few tools and materials, and endless possibilities within the pages of magazines, catalogs, and junk mail.

My tools are: A substrate like a cardboard or canvas, magazines, craft knife, and glue stick.

I first discovered the potential of magazine paper when I was given a stack of magazines that someone couldn’t bear to throw away or recycle. It was called “Victoria”, and is probably defunct now. The pictures were mainly in pastel shades, and the designs were all old-world charm, curlicues, and curves.

Just like the former owner of these magazines, I could not bring myself to cut or tear out the pages- I just marveled at the pictures, or read agony aunt columns and elaborate baking recipes.

But once I got over that hurdle, I realized I had a veritable Pandora’s box of colors in paper that I could use in my “paintings”. My collage journey had just begun.

At first I drew shapes on the colors of the magazine pages I liked, and cut them with scissors.

I learnt that I got better control when I cut out most of the page as close to the desired shape as possible, and moved the paper instead of the scissors.

I use very basic shapes in my designs: Long triangles, or spikes, curved parallels, squares, circles, strips.

I made abstract portraits using these shapes, and these were among the first of my pieces that were sold.

 “Japanese lady” (the image is not very clear), but this was my first sale in my first solo exhibit.

  “Flowers in her hair”,

  “The Belle of the Ball”

I began to use my own paintings as backgrounds, and created geometrical abstracts.

 “The March” This was our most-loved piece, and it graces the home of a good friend.

 “The Wreath” is made almost entirely with long triangle shapes.

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” Dragonflies”

Substrates are another matter, or sometimes it doesn’t even matter. The above piece, which I sometimes call “Dragonflies”, is actually painted on a piece of foamboard. It was chosen to be featured on the calendar brought out by Peninsula Behavioral Health in Knoxville, TN in 2005.

There was a family-owned store in Morristown, TN- Classic Creations that did my framing for the first year that I started showing in galleries. Vicki and I spoke for hours, both standing on either side of the counter in the small store. I was painting a lot, and custom framing was getting expensive.

Rose Center in Morristown gave me a dozen or more frames at a pittance, and we decided we would start framing our own.

We learnt what went under the glass beneath the paintings. My husband said it would be quite easy to cut mats provided we had the right tools, so we ended up investing in a mat cutter.  

Soon, he did all the matting, and I was the trusted helper to hold the steel ruler so he could cut the sharp bevel edges of the mat. The only condition was that I was stay very quiet (this year's resolution), and not to discuss with him the choice of mat color, or the size of the allowance around the piece. Everything had to be predetermined by me, and he would cut the mat to my specifications.

I was thus left with odd-size pieces of matboard and foamboard and sometimes even glass.

This was the perfect square piece of foamboard and as I love the square shape for most of my painting, I got down to work, and “Dragonflies” was started. The plumeria were painted in colored pencils on Bristol board, and attached. The dragonflies were cut out of the inner liner of a wedding invitation card.

Trying to do something for Rudy's room: inspired from Chinese cut-outs found on a restaurant menu!

Memory and Memories

In the soap opera of our lives, memories are episodes. The characters who starred in them are your family and friends--parents, spouse, children, siblings, also neighbors, coworkers, community members.. a wide range of people-from soulmates to mere aquaintances... The ultimate joy is to re-run those memories with them, one scene at a time.. To remember and to remind, to laugh and to lament, to wonder where the other people are now..

Memory is the ultimate gift.. Treasure it if you still have it. Write down your moments to cherish. Returning to a journal entry after a passage of time is an unexpected experience. You get a chance to revisit places, people and moments with a new perspective.

Life and aging takes its toll. Less for some, more for others..I cannot imagine how it feels to someone who cannot remember..especially when they have lived a full life-- and have to stand at the sidelines because they cannot take part. They cannot take part because they cannot remember. They cannot understand references, they feel lost, left-out and utterly helpless.

A slow fade-out of names, faces, events, and finally relationships is a cruel loss. I hope I am able to understand.

Gloating over the beauty of nature hundreds of miles away, one forgets what one has in one's own backyard.

This is a chance picture of Cherokee Lake from Panther Creek State Park, just round the corner from our house. When I lived near the ocean in my childhood, I rarely visited the beach. It was always too crowded, too dirty, too polluted, or too hot. When in my adult years I lived in a city on the coast, visits to the beach were more frequent, but now I realize: not often enough.

When you are landlocked, and the nearest beach is at least seven hours away, you long for that proximity to those vast miles of endless water..daunting, challenging, yet strangely calming.

Lakes are fine too.. even man-made ones. Who cares?

They give the same calm, the same silence, and the same awe that the mind needs to feel grateful.

"Everybody should have his personal sounds to listen for - sounds that will make him exhilarated and alive or quiet and calm” - Andre Kostelanetz

Installation created by Medha Karandikar

as part of Tennessee Journey Stories : An Exhibit

by James-Ben Studio & Art Gallery

at the Niswonger Performing Arts Center in Greeneville, TN

Name: A child and his art: growing up in East Tennessee

" When we uprooted this wide-eyed eight-year old from his familiar Indian home, school, country and friends, and brought him to Morristown, he left behind his toys, gave away his beloved Lego pieces, and waited for his favorite picture encyclopedieas to be shipped. All he brought with him was this incredible talent to draw.

We had seen him draw a detailed harbor scene scene from a tiny dinghy.. from memory. Soon, he was drawing cityscapes from imagination: bridges, skyscrapers, stadiums, roads, neighborhoods..

We specially drove him through downtowns of larger cities.. but it was all there in his mind's eye..he didn't need references.

Band happened.. and the introduction to music. Before long he was writing and playing pieces to us.

Ceramics opened a third dimension. A surprise element with glazes and colors.

This is a peek into his world, and the chronicle of the kid as he grew into an adult."

Have you ever seen a blue see-saw with clouds painted on it? Chances are, you have, and that it was the same one that I did, but you did not check it out. I did, on a whim, on a cold, dull day in the beginning of winter.

The playground was empty, so no fear of being seen- a forty-something woman with no visible kids to justify her presence in a playground at noon.

There was the see-saw, an impossible blue, with wispy clouds painted on it. Pulling my jacket around me, I went toward it, as if drawn. Gingerly, I lowered myself at one end, the lower end. But I had no one to lower the other side- (wrong choice when you are alone).

All of a sudden, it was as if a giant hand had pushed the other end down, jettisoning me with a deadly force and speed upwards, fast and accurate till I landed with a soft thud in a never ending cloudscape of white cotton balls on blue.

It was not cold here, and there was no one in sight. I got up and took a faltering step forward. It was like walking on a trampoline. I was afraid I would fall through that net. I stood still. The cloud began to give way. Instinctively, I took another step, and then another. I realized that I had to walk on, in order to stay safe. And walk I did – through chambers of clouds- clouds of haze and fog, of blinding light and dark gloom, clouds like flurry streaks, and clouds like plowed fields of white.

And then I was tired. It was a chamber of soft clouds, at times white, at times black. All I could feel was softness. I wished to stay, but I could walk no further, and to stay, you had to walk. If you stood, you could fall through. But my legs would not move, my feet were swollen, my ankles leaden, my soles chafing.

The cloud ground was giving way, and I could feel the speed of my fall. As I went down, I shut my eyes tight, waiting for the crash. It didn’t happen.

I was stopped mid-air. I opened my eyes. I saw a pink, pearly light around me, bathing me in a glow of supreme beauty. There was a fragrance in the air, a scent I couldn’t place. And strains of music flowed like skeins of silk.

I was not falling anymore. A pair of arms held me, enveloping me, holding me in a bear-hug.

Above me was a huge ink blue sign with a giant number nine in gold.

Now I knew where I was. On Cloud Nine, duh.

A lovely day at beautiful Lake Tahoe...

On and around my birthday, I have realized that:

• Health is indeed wealth. And sometimes it is NOT in your hands. But a lot of it still is, so take care of yourselves.
• That includes mental health too. That is equally precious, and precarious. So take care of your minds.
• Do only the things that build and sustain you, and diss the others. I now feel the passage of time the most, as if I have already lived more than half of my life (true.. for who lives to be a hundred?) so it is time to take stock. .Some things and some people you cannot change, but you can change the way you look at and deal with them.
• Celebrate everything you have been blessed with: Family, friends, this day, this place, this life.