I AM THE EARTH
A creature of earth, I pause on my path to admire its creations, reflect and make my own renderings. Come walk along to see how the story unfolds…
Each piece carries, not just a design, but, an experience – a moment of realization of our oneness with nature.
SAVITRI
The night of reading a page from Savitri, the book of beginning, Canto 1, was a night of nothingness and then the paints beckoned me to start to paint again.
“Unlit temple of eternity – the unbodied infinite – fathomless zero – Nothingness – the tenebrous womb – mystery of birth – end in vacant nought.
A nameless movement, an unthought idea.
A gate of dreams ajar on mystery’s verge.” – Shri Aurobindo
A MORNING NOT TO FORGET
Found the lotus pond, on a summer morning, filled with dancing, swaying, pink blooms. Sitting by its side, watching the day break, as the red, amber skies turned to gold and blue, the pond reflected the drama above. It was a moment to behold !
Have returned to the pond time and again, to watch it in its various shades. Learning from the lotus to weather the seasons of life !
THE COSMOS
Looking at the skies and way way beyond, the heart fills with wonderment. Grew up believing in the world beyond the visible and have captured it in my art by marrying natural and man made mediums. The colours of hand dyed fabrics, mica the mineral flakes collected from sedements of rocks during the walks on trails in Aravalis, glass beads and silk threads create some pages of my stories of the cosmos, the universe and the ‘felt’ but ‘unknown’.
FRAGNANT CHAMPA
The fragrant Champa is so beautiful and radiant, found world over in so many parts, it is celebrated for the scent and beauty.
Champa is also symbolic of resilience, to my mind. Break it, cut it, throw it, uproot it but it is always ready to pick the thread of life from wherever it was left. Hibernates and takes root as soon as it is put in soil.
Ready for soil – Champa. Soon filled with happy blooms.
Let life learn from the Champa tree, how to be !
THE POPPY FIELDS
Having sprinkled handful of seeds in my patch, one spring we had a wild array, mindfully designed like Monet’s paintings. It was like a field filled with some blue purple cornflowers and several blooms of dancing red poppies !
The sight reminded me of the famous painting of the girl in the poppy field and inspired several of my art renderings.
HOLD ON, JUST BE
‘Being present to the moment,being mindful, thinking out of the box’ are expressions prevalent in the world. To me sometimes, being mindless- being absent from the moment, switching off from the stories of life and also revisiting and belonging to my box are vital.
Those are moments of pause, very vital to the inner self. They are moments of being with the self and belonging to self. Moments of oneness. Those moments of ‘ just be’ mood help observe, reflect and create. Much of my art is out of the extended, ever continuing long pauses, punctuated by several experiences which otherwise could have gone missing !
YOGA BANA
I was privileged to be part of an amazing project which is based on yoga, naturopathy, ayurveda and holistic health. A combination of nature, yoga and spirituality guided the design brief for the residential healing centre in Karnataka.
Having worked on the space design for a vernacular architecture based green campus, for it’s aesthetics, visual communication,organisational development, talent acquisition and training, designing uniforms and defining the experience at the facility provided an unusual project experience. It became a catalyst for turning another leaf in my design journey and creating a stronger bond between consciousness and design. All that the mind had assimilated, self had carried and heart had admired for several years, started to get translated into experiences for self, shared with others.
Hello I am Maneesha, co founder of RBC and am heading it’s design vertical, SaiChi. 37years of practice as a lifestyle products, spatial and communication designer has helped me study people, their equations with the environment, others and self. These observations reflect in the work of SaiChi. Authentic, rooted, yet universal design language brings products that would, in a subtle manner add harmony and joy to your world.
Hope you shall enjoy looking through the pages from my sketchbook which took shape in form of the SaiChi products.
© 2024 SaiChi
