Peacocks

I moved into my new studio today. Although I continue working from the Sion Hill studio, I have been offered the amazing opportunity of additional studio space at Corsham Court, just outside of Bath.

The court is a grand manor dating back to 1582. Sweeping formal gardens, huge staircases curling gracefully in a room that could easily accommodate 300 people, stately corridors full of beautiful china and paintings make for a place that is simply grand. While taking a 'tour of the property' with the housekeeper, I could easily imagine elegantly dressed ladies in swishing silks and gentlemen in evening suits smoking pipes near the fireplaces, with the family portraits looking benignly on.

So, I left for the Court early this morning, excited to begin a new body of work and to experience the space. I was curious how working from the new studio will feel...it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the grandeur of the place.

I had such a wonderful time there. I painted, worked on new ideas and had a productive day. And the peacocks there were the best part! There were atleast 10 of them, strutting about in the lawns, just sunning themselves. They were breathtakingly beautiful! Seeing them there, transported me back to NID (my design school in Ahmedabad, India) and suddenly I was back in the Apparel Studio which overlooked the lawns where the peacocks gracefully drape themselves on the gulmohar tree.

Peacocks at Corsham Court

Looking down from the studio window at Corsham Court, Wiltshire, England

View from my studio at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India

Text Textiles

A while ago, running a finger over my mother’s letter, I experienced text as a texture for the first time. The feel of the dents her pen had made on paper completely absorbed me. This encounter set off a series of experiments exploring textures evocative of handwritten text that have continued to shape my work.

Exploring the third dimension in textiles forms the core of my work. I develop textural, tactile and sculptural qualities in textiles using an array of traditional and modern techniques including embroidery, laser cutting, needle punching and silk screen printing. Graffiti, clay tablets, Braille, personal letters from friends and family, 19th century decorative schoolroom exercises are sources of inspiration that I draw from continually. Scribbles in sketchbooks become ideas for surfaces. Sculptural studies of text translate into wall panels and linear compositions on quilts recall scrolls.

I learnt yesterday that one of my works titled 'Poem', exhibited currently at Riverside Mill gallery, Bovey Tracey, has inspired a poet- Graham Burchell, to respond to it. Recently, he entered his poem into the Torriano Poetry Competition and has won third place. He will be reading the poem in London next month.

I was just thinking, isn’t it interesting is that my work which has been inspired by words has in turn inspired words.

Here is the poem.

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POEM

She calls it Poem, yet writes of family letters,

of a running finger over the paper valleys made

by a mother’s pen. There she picks up the essence of her

as texture, as some spirit Braille perhaps.

I see silk the colour of meat, an open wound

with darker ghosting shadow, and ghost words in thread;

dead straight lines of script with shadow lines to draw one’s

eyes like 3D illusions that may swell from a flat page,

just as I hope for a message to rise from the loops

and springy flow of stitching. Is that a sorry, a soon,

sons, loose, flattened in tantalising proximity?

In places there are words over words; a mother’s scorn.

How many times must I tell you? Others are blurs

as if softened by tears, and some so small, so tight

as to be close-knuckled secrets, full stops or clicks

of voice; meeting points of silk-sound, text and texture.