artnlight

I'm sure Shweta Jain Chopra's darling designs are still fresh in all your visual memories. It is truly the stuff cuddly soft dreams and Valentines are made of. That EACH piece is hand stitched by Shweta, from cutting, to stitching to packaging, no sewing machine, no assembly line of workers putting together the pieces is what surprised me. 

We saw her work in the previous post and this time I'm happy to share with you a more rounded picture of her artistic journey.

Shweta uses only organically died felt.

Most of these beautiful pictures have been shot by Photographer Janina Strauch. And by Shweta's husband Tarun Chopra.

Shweta Jain is settled in Korea and works from Seoul and she is active in the design scene there. She represented India in the Seoul Design Fair.

 

 And this is the part that always excites me, a peek into the home and studio of the petite artist :) And as as I'm coming to expect the home is such an extension of her art, neat clean lines & bright pops of colour.

All you need to do is:
1. Like the SJC FB page 

2. Then come back here and leave a comment confirming you have liked the page and (this is the important part) what you feel or like about SJC designs, and what you feel they can do to add or improve to your experience of SJC Designs

Shweta will ship the product anywhere is the world, so everybody can participate.

The Give-away will close on the 11th of Feb, so do make sure you leave your comment by then :)

There is more news coming up soon so stay tuned.

End of October saw a really exciting event happening in this city. GoodHomes Magazine had just announced it 'GoodHomes for Art - a public initiative'. Which meant the magazine initiated and engaged in many events and conversations around art, met artists, met art bloggers, created experiments in partership with artists to observe how the common man reacted to art. I had the happy opportunity to be invited to the art bloggers meet and that's when i finally met Ronitaa Italia Dhanu, the very effervescent and articulate editor of GoodHomes the decor magazine. I say finally because I had earlier been invited to a GoodHomes blogger event in the city but couldn't make it because I was out of town & had also read about the Blogger Bonding event in Bangalore. I knew I will meet Chandan Dubey, who was the only person i knew there. 

We were an interesting mix of artists, art bloggers, art curators, gallery owners and art magazine editors. The discussion started with why when it came to art there seemed to be this whole mass and class divide and why art seemed to be perceived as something only a certain section of society engaged with, went on to how the whole art initiative by GoodHomes came to being, to how the way art was interpreted sometimes became more of a wall than a bridge between the viewer and art. The things I will be gladdest about was that if it were not for that afternoon I would not have met so many interesting people in one go and actually had an engaging conversation with them. I know for a fact that I will definitely meet most of the people who came there because all of them were so real and came from a place of genuinely loving art and all the work they did came from that honesty. Let me introduce you to the people.

Young and articulate and enthusiastic Jai Ranjit is a self taught artist who lives and works in Mumbai. Jai enjoys photography and writing, and is part of several art and photography groups in Mumbai. He is also part of some really interesting website projects of which I can't speak here as yet :) Suspense. there is some excitement brewing here. Will keep you posted. Meantime you can see some of his work on his blog here.

Ornella D'souza worked with the magazine Outlook for 5 years and wrote the blog art umbrella before she decided her life must be more interesting than it was. She is now a freelance writer and is doing a course on art appreciation that's making ideas fly out of her head at a pace she is finding tough to keep up with. She is quite amazed by how different each day in her new life is. All this I know because I got chatting with her after the blogger meet up.

 

And because I have a thing for leaving you with a happy picture in the end...

It was an evening when the stars shone bright in Art Musings, an art gallery in Colaba. I was horribly late for Nilofer Suleman's show and I rushed in to see my favourite people gathered around the entrance happily chatting. Shilo greeted me with the warmth of a long lost friend and what a fantastic surprise to see the Venkat (Vijaya, Anju & Navina) clan in full strength. I will tell you more about them, but 1st Nilofer Suleman's paintings were on the walls giving everyone there tough competition. 

Every art lover in town much just head to Colaba, Art Musings, for it is not often that you will get to see a Nilofer Suleman in full glory, up-close and personal and you can spend hours in front of each painting and take in the the humour, the well observed details and it takes being in front of her painting to appreciate the quirk quotient of this country :) We are killer :) And we have Nilofer Suleman, now try and beat that.

I love this picture of Shilo's. She looks like that the young girl that she is :)

I was delighted to meet the Venkats at the show and what a small world it is! Nilofer and Navina were friends from college and Navina is Shilo's god mother.  

 Dr.Vijaya Venkat is a pioneer in the the field of nutrition and is directly responsible for more and more people of my generation choosing to live a more conscious life and eating right and eating fresh. If we become a healthier country 20 years from now, which we will, we will have this woman to thank. She has founded The Health Awareness Centre, which is doing some amazing and relentless work in the field of health and nutrition.

While Shilo played the solicitous host to perfection, her friends and well wishers were present and I had the good fortune to meet the very gracious and young Avijit Michael, whom I have wanted to congratulate ever since i saw this video.

This is the  map to the place.

These days I feel I'm on a roller coaster with the wheels firmly tied to my feet. Can I untie them? No. That settled, I will not debate & waste energy, I'll just go with it - sweeeee... Opening the next post of the Artnlight Anniversary Celebrations is none other than Aarohi Singh. She of the blazing heart and bold colour. When i set eyes on these pictures of her, I begged her to have them for this post. Nothing is more apt. These pictures of Aarohi with the painting that she created for Good Homes are such a reflection of the way Aarohi is & lives. Red for heart and action, Yellow for intelligence and light and a pair of piercing intuitive eyes that see things that most miss.

  

 Give Away 1 - A set of 4 elegant black and white illustrations Aarohi made of Kaajal.

 Give Away 2: This GORGEOUS set of Lotus coasters

 So yes there will be 3 winners :)

And this is what you do to win the give-away:

1. Like the 'Art by Aarohi' fb page and leave a comment there saying which giveaway you want and why. In case you want to be eligible for more than one give-away, please leave separate comments for each give-away and why.
2. Leave a similar comment here, stating which one you love/want the most and why.
3. And this give-away closes on 6th of October. So make sure you have commented before that.

 

And because we can't have tea together, and because we didn't click a picture together when we actually met for tea,  here's us sharing a virtual cup. Head over to Aarohi's blog to say hi to a pic of me with a mug of tea :) And comment away to win your free give aways :) :)

When I knew I was going to Bangalore for the Soul Santhe, Shilo Shiv Suleman was the 1st person I informed. I knew if there was something I was looking forward to more than even the Soul Santhe it was meeting her. And not only would I get to meet her, but her mother too would be there, the legendary Nilofer Suleman at the altar of whose art I worship. For the few of those who don't know, Shilo is the incredibly young and accomplished artist whom the world recognised before she passed out of art School. But more than that she and her work captures your imagination. I have wanted to meet this young girl much before she went on to be a TED speaker. "She illustrated her first book for children at the age of 16 and has illustrated and published 8 others since. She has also been actively involved in setting up community art projects. Earlier this year, at only 22 years of age, she was chosen by TED and Levi's as an ambassador of the 'Shape of Things to Come' - one of three Indian women to be felicitated with this honour at the TED Global Conference 2011, Edinburgh. In 2010 she was selected for an INK fellowship for her work as a young innovator in her field and now continues her work with the community as their Featured Artist of the Year. She was also one of the youngest speakers at the WIRED UK and DLD conference in London and Munich." So in brief and maybe even flippantly- painter of books, buses, walls, art activist, gorgeous App designer, stage designer, TED speaker, (do click on the links which will take you to different aspects of her work) representative of a generation of women, of art, of culture. For she speaks of and derives from Arjuna and Apsara's when normal kids her generation would not think it cool to do so even if they knew enough to. It takes coming from and standing on strong ground and a sure sense of self to take a leap and fly.

As i walked into Shilo's & Nilofer's home, there was much to take in, the striking girl with frangipani in her hair and the home itself which gave me a distinct feeling of walking into her art. It all came together very beautifully. There were no two stories here. Only one. This was a home that had so much to give. There are some spaces that are very generous and this has everything to do with the people inhabiting it.

I loved the verandah outside their home. It was done in cool whites, had abundant greens and had these cowheads that Shilo had collected on her travels to across India.

And this is her room where she lives and works from. Her work is integral to where she comes from, who she is and what she truly feels. Perhaps that is why it has gone as far as it has.

 It was uncanny feeling being in her space, it felt like being inside her live art, all the things that were drawn in her illustrations seemed present in this room. The frangipani, the lotuses, the gods, the twinky lights, were all here.

And now we enter Nilofer Suleman's studio, the place where the most astoundingly intricate and tongue-in-cheek humoured paintings are born.

It felt surreal to enter this space of an artist whom I admired so much, making casual conversation while I clicked and she worked, as if this were any other day.

 Entering the workspace of any artist is for me entering their private space, it is where they engage with their ideas, where their thoughts and being meet the muse and creation takes place. It is no less than a privilege of a lifetime if the artist allows you to witness the process of creation.

For quick references: Shilo's TED talk, her blog & Khoya the interactive app she developed for the ipad.