KUart Class of 2010: Part II

KATHMANDU, June 10: Stepping into Sheelasha Rajbhandari’s corner on the ground floor of KUart’s building in Mandhikatar, one can see her thoughts and ideas posted on the wall. Visually transformed into sketches, the wall reveals the importance of preparatory sketches, collection of materials, and brainstorming for artists before they begin to work on the actual piece itself.



From clippings of fashion magazines to images of Thangka paintings, this sculptor’s influences and inspirations are not limited to one visual style alone.[break]



“Papier-mâché, as a material, appears heavy, but in fact it’s very light,” she puts in, lifting one of her gigantic sculptures of an ant. Sheelasha’s final project is an attempt to unify unrelated factors—something tiny as an ant, and Hindu gods.



“When an ant is positioned vertically, its form reminds us of Hindu deities because of its six arms,” she shares in her statement.



Drawing from such relevance, Sheelasha chose to portray an ant in three forms – Brahma, Keshava, and Nateshwor.



“It’s been built upon an armature of wires and required a lot of time—I worked on the structure of one for at least two weeks,” she reveals. “I also experimented with different colors because I didn’t want to make them bronze-like,” points out Sheelasha as she dabs some blue on one of the sculptures. The hard work has definitely paid off.




Besides the three sculptures, Sheelasha has a series of clay reliefs, again on the theme of ants.



The works, however, are different from her three-dimensional renditions. The ants not only appear cartoon-like with comic-book onomatopoeia such as ‘Bang’ and ‘Yaaaaa!!!’—what we usually see in Hollywood animation flicks.



In terms of techniques, Sheelasha has surely experimented a lot.



“This one was done with the process of Raku,” points out Sheelasha at a slab. Raku is traditional Japanese process of low-firing clay that produces a glaze of cracks on the surface. Most of her clay pieces have intentional antique looks.



“I plan to display the slabs like a museum, as if they were old artifacts,” she states of her exhibition, which opens today at the Nepal Art Council.







SUMAN THAPA



After completing his high school, Suman took up some hobby painting classes, which made him realize his potential in arts. Although he began with painting, as a final year student of KUart, his body of works leans to sculpture.




“I felt that I was limited to the canvas and I wanted explore more,” he answers, when asked about the shift. About his sculptures, Suman writes in his statement that he creates his

pieces using his intuition and according to “what I see and what it could be.”



One of his sculptures is a large-scale khukuri but entirely constructed out of bottle caps. Inspired by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, who was a pioneer of ‘readymades’ or art made from found objects, Suman calls his works ‘junk art.’



“In my understanding, junk is something that is no longer in use. Objects that have been trashed,” shares Suman and elaborates, “I wanted the piece to be a satire for pollution and to portray junk as a weapon.”



Repetition of the same object is essential to Suman’s work. Similar to classmate Amit Shilakar’s concept, he states, “Using repetition as an artistic strategy allows me to create a distinctive visual aura and narrative that’s only possible through the unity and collectiveness of different units.”



For his 12-feet-long Khukuri, Suman has made careful decisions on the placement of the caps.







“I’ve used rusted ones for the handle,” he puts in. “I wanted the body to be distinct from the handle.” The colorful bottle caps have also been placed more densely as the khukuri winds down to the tip of the blade.



While Suman is attempting to pass the message of recycling and reuse through his art, it is somewhat ironic that for one of his pieces, he has used materials bought from the market.



“At first, I found some disposed chicken wire. But because I couldn’t find more, I had to buy some,” Suman – who has made human figures out of the wires – tries to justify. Other materials that Suman has used are bottle corks and blades.

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