Mithila “Elephant mama” in a garden of flowers!

July 19^th 2016: I am travelling in India and I just spoke with Raniji over the phone today to ask her how she felt about the coloring done on her drawing by kids and adults in Newton. Her reply was filled with love and laughter: “I love the way children and adults have played with color. I could never have dreamt of this transformation in the drawing I sent. I feel thrilled by it and feel it has become a special piece of art.. It is a very beautiful combination of two worlds.”

July 12^th, 2016: It was a sunny beautiful and busy afternoon at the Newton Center green and we colored the unfinished “Mithila elephant mama” and “Waterbabies” billboards.

Most kids and parents were absorbed in a concert by Alastair Moock’s band and as I spread out my billboards, the kids came trickling in and watched curiously. Then all of the sudden when the band stopped there was a flood of kids and adults pouring over the canvas and coloring furiously.  As they colored, they talked about the elephant, fishes, turtles and lotus and seemed just happy communing with nature on the canvas. After an hour and half, there was quiet, till the teens that milled around late afternoon looking for “Pokemon” allowed themselves to be distracted by the coloring activity. There were several curious on lookers who eagerly stopped to color and chat about Mithila and Rani Jha.

This drawing of the Elephant is one of ten black and white coloring cards we call “Ma and I color in the Mithila style” by Dr. Rani Jha.  It exhibits the light and playful side of the artist and her ability to capture the nurturer’s expression of tenderness and love in eyes of the animals and birds.

Girls hardly were educated and growing up Dr. Jha fought against tradition, went to school, received an education and just a few years ago earned her a doctorate on women folk painters of the region. She is the first woman in her family to work outside the home, earlier with a shelter for women and now as a master painter/teacher at Mithila Art Institute. As an artist, Dr. Jha’s main body of work is a reflection of her experience working as a counselor at the shelter, Abortion clinic, Female Infanticide, Lifting the veil are some of her poignant contributions. Dr. Jha is also a writer and poet.

Thanks to Newton Mayor’s Office for Cultural Affairs and Artful Pianos, Newton for collaborating again for this event. Also thanks to friends and kids from Newton who knew of the coloring activity and came in to perform music at the “Artful Piano”. The Rotary club sponsored Newton has Talent participant Sriram Narayanan played beautiful compositions on the piano and winners Hari Narayanan sang Carnatic classical and Inesh Vytheswaran played Mridangam. Maria Arvello of Artful Pianos and I hope that such impromptu multicultural  musical and public art meetings will become more common among the city’s residents in the near future and the Newton Center green becomes a place for families to interact with multicultural performers,  musicians, dancers and artists.

 July 13^th: The Bill Board went up at the City center intersection facing the Artful piano replacing the beautiful Kalamkari peacocks and it is equally adored by all.

In the near future Thinkfolk hopes to bring an extraordinary travelling exhibition on Mithila Art curated by Ethnic Arts Foundation, Berkeley, California, to the New England area- a stunning contemporary collection of artwork by Mithila artists. Our goal at Thinkfolk is to celebrate our shared cultural heritage and connect audience to inspiring stories of artists and crafts people from across the globe. We are committed to setting up an online collaborative virtual repository of folk art stories and documentation, a place for folk and traditional artists and their supporters to connect, share, preserve, innovate and celebrate. Thinkfolk, connecting communities through the arts. 

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