🇬🇧 An update!

Hello again! Sorry for the long delay but I’m back! Hopefully for longer this time :)

I just wanted to update you all on what I’m doing at the moment and the future of this blog.

Since my last post I’ve been busy in Lalit Kala Akademy’s print studios, so my next posts will be recaps of what I’ve done there, the discoveries of different techniques and materials, and the experimentation I’ve tried to do.

Since there is much less to explain in terms of historic and cultural background than for the Durga Puja, the tone of this blog will change; focusing now much more on my personal work and artistic practice.

Before any of that though, some closure on the Durga Puja. As promised, I attempted to design my own pandal, on the theme of Alice in Wonderland, so here it is.

The Pandal

Below is the sketchbook spread with my concept sketches, but as the organisation of my ideas is as unclear as my handwriting, let me walk you through it in more detail.

I began by deciding the overall layout that my pandal might have, using my observations from common pandal shapes to choose from. Pandals are generally either made on streets and are thus long and narrow (like the pandal I worked on in North Calcutta), or hosted in parks or sports fields where the much larger space allows for big round pandals.

I decided I wanted a combination of both; a long corridor-like entrance which would open into a large circular space with the idol in the centre. My idea was to recreate Alice’s journey through wonderland, in which the viewer would walk past a series of tableaus depicting various scenes and characters from the book.

The Exterior

The outside of the pandal would be a large dome with an arched hallway leading into it, similar to the shape of an Iglu. It would, like all pandals, be made from a mixture of cloth, bamboo and paper maché.

Over this dome would be a tree, once again, made from paper and bamboo. The background painted with a landscape. As this is just a concept sketch, the background is very simple, but if I were to make this in real life, I would like it to look more realistic, in a style similar that of Victorian landscape painters such as John Constable (work pictured below).

Extensive landscape with grey clouds, John Constable

The roots of the tree would wrap around the entrance tunnel, a reference to the 1951 animated film in which the rabbit hole is under a tree. The space which I have left blank beneath the roots, I am still unsure how to fill, but I thought maybe painting it like a cross section of soil, with fossils and such buried underneath the tree would look interesting, though it is an idea that needs to be refined as it doesn’t have much in common with Lewis Carol’s work.

Finally, though, again, the above image is a simple sketch, I imagine the tree to be quite detailed, with textured, uneven tree bark like that of an old oak, and perhaps things hanging from its branches like playing cards, tea cups, and other references to the book.

On a sidenote: to those who are struggling to imagine just how such a large and detailed thing could be made with just bamboo, I give you this photo of a pandal I saw this year, featuring a practically life sized whale sitting on silver waves, all made of strips of bamboo. The skill and ingenuity of the artists making pandals is unmatched, and I firmly believe that my tree will be child’s play compared to some of the other things they have worked on.

The Rabbit Hole

As the interior of the pandal will be Wonderland, I thought it appropriate to enter through the rabbit hole as Alice does. In my imagination, this would be a tunnel, lined with coloured tissue paper illuminated from the inside. For this, I was inspired by the 2009 stop-motion film Coraline, specifically a scene (pictured below) where Coraline crawls through an inter-dimensional tunnel. For a better idea of how it looks in the context of the film, here is a clip of the scene.

As the film is stop-motion animated, everything in it was physically made, and this tunnel was constructed using tissue paper, wire and coloured lights. I would like my tunnel to look something like this, though obviously on a much larger scale, and although it would perhaps make more sense to have it natural, earthy colours, I quite like the colours used here, as it creates an otherworldly atmosphere and also echoes colour schemes used in various iterations Alice, like both the 1951 and the 2010 films. According to the book, the walls of the rabbit hole are  “filled with cupboards and bookshelves“ and have “maps and pictures hung upon pegs“. There is even a jar of marmalade on one of the shelves. Thus, I would attach these items to the walls of the tunnel, and just like in my pandal in North Calcutta, have them built into the wall at odd, confusing angles. For the pictures hanging on the wall, I would have a mixture of real art work that I feel matches the feel of the book such as works by Van Gogh, Magritte, Bosch and of course Dali, who’s surrealist art greatly inspired the original Disney film. He even made his own illustrations of the story (pictured below).

(you can see the rest of these fascinating illustrations and read about them in this article)

As well as the aforementioned art, I would also add portraits of the characters, done by me and other artists who have created their own interpretations of the characters. As for the maps, once again a mixture of new and old, real and fake would suit the overall surealness of the story.

For a better idea of how I envision the rabbit hole, here is an illustration I made a while ago of the scene. This was drawn before I’d had the idea of making a pandal, but I think the idea of the cluttered atmosphere of the tunnel comes across.

Finally, at the entrance of the tunnel, there would be the white rabbit, looking at his pocket watch. Most decorations for pandals are made from either bamboo and paper or styrofoam, and although it would probably be easiest to make him from styrofoam, I prefer the alternative for its eco-friendly aspect. Also, as this pandal will most likely never actually be made, I’ve chosen to ignore such technicalities as time, practicality and budget.

I have quite a lot left to write, so to avoid making this post too long, the interior will be in a separate post which will be posted tomorrow!