Photography, printmaking and stitchery are rituals for me. My work not only reflects aspects of my childhood in India (the color, the sunshine), but also the experience of my life's journey. Photography best expresses that journey and has become part of my prints. I enter a world where memory and psyche intertwine in a dance with the printmaking process.
Over 23 years living in the landscape of the West as a resident of Idaho, I have been able to explore my past through an aesthetic of the present. Through the years, vivid images from my childhood have been resolved and become more abstract through collage; past and present co-mingle and merge as one. The ritual and symbolism of life in India unconsciously appear in my work. Stories, many from my grandmother, enter my work in narrative form. A classic Western Bengal stitchery technique has found its way into some of my prints, sometimes as a doodle. Called Kantha, this stitch tells a story through layers of saris that eventually become a quilt.
Perhaps the bridge which connects my two worlds is in fact the lotus. My father often told me to be like the lotus, which surmounts the murky water of its existence and sits above it, glowing and full of light.
Over 23 years living in the landscape of the West as a resident of Idaho, I have been able to explore my past through an aesthetic of the present. Through the years, vivid images from my childhood have been resolved and become more abstract through collage; past and present co-mingle and merge as one. The ritual and symbolism of life in India unconsciously appear in my work. Stories, many from my grandmother, enter my work in narrative form. A classic Western Bengal stitchery technique has found its way into some of my prints, sometimes as a doodle. Called Kantha, this stitch tells a story through layers of saris that eventually become a quilt.
Perhaps the bridge which connects my two worlds is in fact the lotus. My father often told me to be like the lotus, which surmounts the murky water of its existence and sits above it, glowing and full of light.
