Most people understand poetry by reading it but artist Shilpy Gupta blends its magic into pottery and creates masterpieces on clay. The artist says that taking inspiration from poetry, she depicts the emotions through her art.
“All the pieces that I make are inspired by poetry. Each piece is inspired by a particular poem and that's my effort to depict the kind of emotions that poetry generate. I try to put that feeling out on a piece of ceramic and that's why it is called poetry in pottery,” she says.
Shilpy's works come in the form of pieces that don't have inscriptions in the form of poetry but yet convey the meaning.
“I create images that convey the feelings that one gets after they read a poem. There's a lot of imagery and brush work that one can see in my pieces. I try to mould the ceramic according to the feeling. So, everything from painting, brushwork and preparing the canvas is done by me and that is what helps me in conveying the meaning of the poems easily,” she says.
In her recently concluded exhibition in Delhi, the artist showcased her works on Rumi and Buddha. Born in Saharanpur, Shilpy's introduction to pottery happened quite early in her life but it was much later that she fulfilled her dream of being an artist. She did not learn the basics and other elements of pottery through any formal education, but from studio artists in the US.
A pottery inspired by Rumi's poems
“I always found pottery very magical. At my birthplace, I had seen traditional potters do magic with a ball of clay and turn it into something so beautiful. This always stayed with me. However, I am a graduate in Home Science and completed by Masters in social work. After that, for two and an half years, I worked with the ministry of rural development. I moved to the US in 2000 after marriage and it was then that I came across a pottery studio owned by Chad. I got so interested that I ended up learning pottery under him.”
Shilpy continued learning pottery from different studios for the next five years and besides the first-hand experience on the basics of studio management, she learnt ways to prepare everything from scratch.
After doing two big shows in the US—Germantown, Maryland—at the BlackRock Centre for the Arts, she moved to Bengaluru to pursue her passion of studio poetry in India. In 2006, Shilpy did a show at Lalit Kala Akademi in Chennai and later did a solo show in Bengaluru. The artist who also owns a studio, Ceramic Trail, is now working on her next show based on the collection on poems by Robert Frost, scheduled to take place in Chennai in September this year. Besides this, she is also working on a series of letters.
“I am working on this series of letters sent by the older generation to the younger generation. These are the short poems written by me and will focus on the words the older generation wants to convey to its younger generation and what we can learn from them. Since nobody writes letters now, there's a charm in them and that is what will be conveyed in those works.”
