The Advent of Monsoon

Monsoon was fun and is fun in different ways..

Flipping through some of my erstwhile photography, I found this image and the memories of the four years of Marine drive were revitalized especially moments during the monsoon. Friends and fellows having had this experience will rightly understand what exactly I am trying to say in the unsaid words.

The above photograph explains the play of light a few minutes before the sunset along the Mumbai skyline.

A few years ago, monsoon for me was about landscape paintings with lots of difficult greens, then designing fun T-shirt prints for the monsoon trip with another set of colours and strokes on the canvas. This inclination towards brushes and colours was the influence of having artist friends all around. Now, the artist friends remain but the context has changed, the influences are still the same but the consequence is different. Though I miss painting a landscape in the fields, I do enjoy making textures and patterns with a pencil, paper, scanner and a computer.

Images: Left: Landscape painted at Badlapur (2005), Right: T-shirt print design (2005)

Images: Print/Pattern designs inspired from water (2008).

The process is a playground with play of brush strokes in the Van Gogh style, oil pastel renderings, doodling like the kids, some market visits and some art galleries, sometimes joining the dots and sometimes making the lines straight but all in a particular context and the context makes the design significant.

Awaiting this monsoon for some fresh inspirations and innovations...

The Ice-cream Cone

The ice-cream cone was created by Ernst Hamwi in 1904 at the St. Louis World’s Fair. He was selling waffles and next door to him was an ice-cream vendor who ran out of dishes. He rolled a waffle to put the ice-cream in and the rest is history.

(From the book 'How to have kick-ass ideas’ by Chris Barez-Brown)

Images: Natural's Ice-cream, Matunga (E)

Indeed an interesting history!

Today most of us do not enjoy the ice-cream without the cone!

Passing by a road with ‘Natural’s Ice-cream’ on the side, I encountered a person making waffle cones and thus could connect to the earlier read fact. It’s not even a one minute job! Very interesting to look at! The process of making is shown in the above images.

Edible Containers
'Necessity is the mother of invention' stands true in this case. Ice-cream cones are edible containers, first in the history. Up till now not much milestones have been achieved in this area of innovation, but there are a few which can be found on google.
My aunt, once had cooked a preparation which she called the 'katori chat'. It was actually the chat in a katori. But whats so special aboout this?! The katori is edible!! Wow!

Such an amazing idea! also super sustainable! I can imagine going to a chowpatty to have some chatpata chat! I finish the whole chat then roll up the plate like a tissue paper or something and eat it...its done! (tissue paper is not a good metaphor I guess) No washing business and not even plastic or pater waste to be dumped. And then you can even have edible chopsticks. Eat your noodles with a bite of chopstickes. Once it is over, select a new flavour of chopsticks for yourself. Thats sooper cool che!

Cane Furniture

Images: S.V. Road, Bandra (W)

I have always liked handmade cane and bamboo products. During my junior college days I remember that I had somehow managed to buy a flower vase made of cane (obviously to keep imitation flowers).

Though NID has a huge bamboo workshop, I never managed to do even a small product using the vast resource.

And now, after years of longing I have had a chance to buy a piece of furniture for myself and of course I preferred the cane one. A book shelf for my library of books.

Go to S.V. road, Bandra (W) and you will find lots of cane and even wood carved furniture! One can find good workmanship and well finished products like centre tables, chairs, sofa sets, shelves and many more. Lamp shades perfectly made from cane waste are the prettiest things there. Small showrooms are spread all through the long road where bargaining for the right price is must. You can also order customized furniture here. I guess, one can also try out prototyping of self designed products here. I hope to do this some day!

Nostalgia: The Marine Drive

Image: Night landscape of Marine Drive painted by me in March 2004

The still street lights and the speedy lights of the traffic, separated with red signals at intervals, the soft and bright lights from distant houses creating the background, light reflected in water, lit hoardings each adding a new story… the rushes of water towards the strong wall, with geometric patterns sturdy and strong, the touch of the fresh air with scent of the deep and whispers of a friend… makes up a lovely evening at the Marine Drive, a multi-sensory experience.

Spring Summer 2010

Hi there!

Logging in to blogger is just not it!!

It's now I guess I have started real blogging. Hope to post many interesting things here... looking forward for an interesting blog-relation with you all.

Cheers!!
XOXO
Aarti

Something very fresh of my works makes my first post...

Image: Waffle kitchen towels woven in Karur. Five colors representing the five color stories for SS10

Photo Credits: Malhar Sawant
Copyright 2009 Tracon espl


The radiant sun unfolding its orange glory,
Fills with vermilion warmth the gentle scenery.
Limpid skies neighbouring the aqua marina,
With new spreads of emerald on the sienna.
Many are the colours of Mother Nature,
Rejuvenating the fresh Spring and Summer.

Colour and trend forecasting is indeed a very interesting job. These five colours were proposed as the spring colors for 2010 Tracon espl, an export house working from Mumbai and Karur. More info about Tracon can be seen here.
Each color forms a complete story with coordinating colours. This could have had an additional purple color but purple being a very 'fall' color was eliminated. But on the later revelation of facts or to be called 'the made facts' purple was the so called 'in' color of Spring 2010. Now here is a point! Who decides all this? "The so called Trend Setters".
It is very interesting to find out, how does one color becomes 'the color of the season' and the whole world follows the same trend. All this is in the context of export market. In India still colour trends are not followed that well because of different people having different tastes. Well, to put in other words, I would like to say that Indians are self contextualized and do not blindly follow someone saying something about color and saying that-this-is-the-right-colour!!