Textual content by Shirin Mehta. Images by Anupama Sebastian and Afroz Ulla. Styling by Sarah Rajkotwala. Artwork route by Aishwaryashree

Puja Rao, 39
Ceramic Artist and Designer
Bengaluru 

What initially drew you to this artwork/craft type? Are you a full-time ceramicist or do you steadiness it with a “common” job?
After finishing NIFT [National Institute of Fashion Technology] Mumbai’s trend design programme in 2004, I labored in Hyderabad for a yr after which shifted to Bangalore and labored with Munch Design Workshop within the areas of analysis and traits and forecasting, and attire, graphic, product and packaging design. Alongside the best way, whereas planning my dwelling backyard I found an enormous hole available in the market for backyard services. Following a brief entrepreneurial programme at IIM Bangalore in 2010, I launched my model Songs of Summer season providing panorama designing and arrange a retailer for backyard merchandise in a wide range of supplies, ceramics being considered one of them. Initially, I took an introductory workshop in ceramics, extra as a means of getting some understanding of the medium, however my curiosity grew and I used to be hooked. In 2012, I arrange my very own studio.

What’s your technique of creation? How does the inventive impulse manifest for you?
I work with a clay physique referred to as stoneware utilizing each hand-building and wheel-throwing strategies. I’m always experimenting with strategies individually and together, floor textures, mixing supplies, carvings and glazes and glaze functions. Presently, I’m working with oxidation firing in an electrical kiln.

Most of my items are my explorations of moments – private experiences of issues, nature, occasions and moods that I attempt to seize. The great thing about working with ceramics…is time! The items change as you modify and vice versa. It’s storytelling via type, strains, depth, textures, color, tone, depth, layers and myriad mixtures.

What evokes your shapes and silhouettes?
Inspiration is a state of being. You simply have to permit the inventive power to circulate via uninterruptedly. 

Do you sketch your concepts earlier than you begin or drift?
When there’s a flood of concepts, I attempt to pen these down as rapidly as I can, and people sketches act as a revisiting set off. Very not often concrete, they’re a mixture of type, motion, texture, color, element, feeling or thought.

The inventive set off is available in all kinds; generally it’s a gesture, generally it’s the leftover of a gesture and generally it’s simply the absence of issues.

Did you at all times have a want to create, at the same time as a baby?
Way back to I can bear in mind, the inventive urge was at all times there. My mother and father recognised it and at all times inspired me. From copying the caricatures of Rajiv Gandhi and VP Singh within the Sunday newspapers, which I used to be enamoured with, to utilizing pencil sharpening blades to carve on blackboard chalk at school; from falling in love with inventive individuals in my youth [out of admiration] to hanging round within the pottery studio in considered one of my colleges; from bartering artwork provides to discovering forests to sit down in; landscaping and, now, ceramics. It has at all times been about artwork or creation in some type or the opposite.

What function do artwork and design on the whole play in your life?
Each single factor we now have skilled since beginning shapes us. Artwork is a device to expertise and talk creation in numerous kinds. I encompass myself with nature, books, music and myriad conversations, and I additionally spend quite a lot of time in solitude. However I do choose and select generally. As an example, a small tumbler I picked up…I like the fat-bellied type. It’s so intelligent and misleading; it’s tiny however holds extra water than you anticipate. I like consuming from it…small joys!

What would you usually put on if you work?
I’ve a distinct set of clothes that I alter into at work. Places me within the temper. Something that doesn’t limit my actions and is conducive to the climate. 

Is there any type of conventional Indian ceramic creation that you just love? That you just acquire inspiration from?
Indian crafts, temple structure, music, dance, clothes, philosophy, yogic practices have all influenced me in numerous methods at totally different occasions of my life. I bear in mind how throughout a highway journey with a pitstop at Madurai, I used to be gripped by these small bronze sculptures of Nataraja and the goddesses within the Meenakshi Temple. The extent of detailing, the ageing, the tone, the fluidity of the kinds and proportions, together with the silence in that house, the sunshine at the moment, the coldness of the ground, the odor, and the sensation led to by the merging of all of it, was so shifting. Delicate and robust, small and highly effective, gentle and heavy, pungent and extra – all on the identical time. Generally, when that feeling revives, I attempt to relive it by capturing some side in a bit.

Has there been a defining inventive second in your life that informs all others?
A interval that started on the finish of 2015 has performed a pivotal function in altering my strategy. The 5 years thereon had been transformative. My relationship with the world inside and out of doors modified. My relationship with clay modified. It turned a medium for expressing and exploring my inside workings, and it enabled me to precise and rework my feelings. It was a path of self-discovery that made me unearth the fossils on which I stood. And that journey, it gave me phrases I couldn’t discover, it gave me a vocabulary I didn’t have, it was the present of an sincere companion.

Kabir’s doha [couplet] got here to thoughts throughout these days: 

Maati kahe kumhaar se tu kya rondhe mohe,
Ek din eisa aiyega, mein rondhuga tohe
[The clay says to the potter why are you kneading me
The day will come when I will be kneading you]

Do the items at all times end up the best way you imagined or are there variables which can be unimaginable to regulate? Is that this thrilling or upsetting?
All the pieces is within the technique of turning into one thing; nothing is ever static, neither the viewer nor the piece of artwork. That is true of the method of creation of a bit of artwork or creation as an entire – it’s the identical factor.

So far as execution…the one disappointments had been when issues went technically fallacious or I found that I didn’t have sufficient data. These emotions are additionally fleeting since these failures solely catapulted studying and newer concepts. The wonder lies in the truth that you don’t management all of it.

Earlier: Latika Nehra
Subsequent: Rajvi Mehta