The cafe witnessed another great show (Sepember 4th to 18th) mounted by Lalida Jitjai of Thailand who has just completed her B Fine from Kala Bhavana, the fine arts department of Viswa Bharati university. Lalida, who specialised in textliles returns to Thailand early next month where she is planning to work with a weavers' cooperative in her native Chiang Rai.



Lalida had on display her weaving samples, all executed on a Manipuri loom. It is a pity indeed that during her tenure she did not get a chance to work with local weavers and her creativity in weaving remained restricted to samples. Anyway the weavers who work with Alcha did manahge to come and see her show and it was great to witness the animated discussions between them and Lalida.

But what stunned those who saw the exhibition was her Kalamkari pieces.







So Indian in technique and so Thai in execution.

Keya Sarkar

I have always loved tapestry as a medium but realised that not too many art lovers choose them over paintings.

When Somabha, who had finished her M Fine in textiles from Kala Bhavana joined Alcha a few months ago I was excited about getting her to make a few tapestries for us. She did and we turned them into bags.



Instead of hanging on walls these became mobile pictures framed in leather with a much greater opportunity to be seen and appreciated. Of course many of our customers couldn't really tell that they were woven painstakingly and therefore didn't appreciate the fact that they were priced higher than many of our other products, but for those who did the price wasn't a factor.






The good news is that we got a new range, the bad news is that Somabha got a job as an art teacher in Dehradun and chose that over designing. She has promised to create more and courier them to us which can be fashioned into bags, but till she actually keeps her promise, her creations have become even more priceless to us.

A tapestry site I love – http://www.desertsongstudio.com/

Keya

I have always wondered how Santiniketan which has over 300 art students studying at Viswa Bharati's art department, Kala Bhavana every year has no more than one gallery. Since it is Viswa Bharati's gallery the students seldom get a chance to exhobit there.

So we thought it would be a good idea to use the wall space in the Alcha cafe to showcase the work of the students specially those that have finished their seven year course and are leaving Santiniketan.

Although we have had such shows earlier, the most recent one, titled 'Alu Flower' of printmaker Atsuko Honda (August 1 -14th) was extremely satisfying.

Atsuko Honda

First because many of the Kala Bhavan students who came to see the show probably saw for the first time how art can be mounted outside of a traditional gallery. And many of the Bengali tourists who came to the cafe spent a lot of time not only appreciating the show but actually spending a lot of time with the artist in understanding her philosophy of documenting her each day in Santiniketan through monoprints.



The mounting of the show was ofcourse so unobtrusive and professional (Japanese all the way) and for all the 15 days Atsuko was present morning and evening.



The fact that her boyfriend had come all the way from Japan to give her support for her show must have helped.

Keya

Everyone has you believe that uploading images is as easy as falling off a log. Not so. Spent the whole of the afternoon uploading a whole lot of images and then waited. and then some and now after two whole hours the site is still not carrying the uploaded images. So how does it work? Should it like take so looong?

This is a test Post created by Technical Team!