Folk Art Workshop - Apr 26, 27 (2010)

It had been a while since I met my buddies at the DSF after-school centre in Yeshwantpur. While every time the children are either entirely a different set or partially so, the fact that remains constant is the excitement about any interaction outside of a class room setting. I did have to play "the teacher" to some extent in curbing their over-enthusiasm, but I mostly curbed my own senses to maintain the respected discipline! This workshop was meant for the children to learn from their own experiences and imagination than from my personal notes :)

I would like to believe that it did succeed to some extent, and the best testimony being these works we managed to create -

This one being a team effort, where we had each participant create a little warli man / woman so we could create the dancing ring:



Anjum and I worked on this piece, mostly Anjum did all the hard work. And this work has already received kudos from several fellow DSF members and friends. She's had many a pat on the back, the most rewarding of which are those pats coming from her peers! Anjum is also very good with making the mehndi patterns and has a commendable eye for precision, consistency and detail!


The first day of this workshop was quite a challenge. What the children most enjoyed was skipping the wordy slides to just see pieces of work projected on the ceiling. And yet even as they lay on their backs, were wow-ed by images from Pithora, Saora,Chittara and Warli Art, some of them couldn't relate to this kind of art. "Why draw people like this?" - a girl came and asked me :) ... that was my chance to imprint the values, such folk art call for - simple, secular monochromes that depict that communities work well when they work together with the strongest building blocks being - respect for each other and respect for nature

This is one piece of art I worked on for my slides to add value through simple folk art -

I look forward to more such interactions and thank My3 and Sabu for encouraging me to conduct these sessions. And I hope the children enjoyed working as a team :) -

More pictures from the sessions follow: