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Small event in Goa's scenic locality helps boost local art
FN
Panaji (Goa), Feb 11: Goa's unusual festival of the
arts has got underway on the weekend, helping to showcase a
wide range of skills from this tiny state and beyond.
'Bondo', Goa's most famous drummer and a man with golden
fingers who can squeeze out amazing sounds out of even a
wooden box, grins out of the portrait photography of Alex
Fernandes.
Gulf-returned Fernandes has about the most amazing collection
of Goan musicians' potraits, and is one of those artists
showcasing his work at the five-day festival that opened late
Friday.
"It takes 4-5 days to create one of these," says Narendra
Hanswal of Gogol, Margao in South Goa. Hanswal intricately
engraves portraits on black granite stone, andn prices each
from Rs 500 to Rs 5000, depending on the size.
"I can even do photographs. It lasts for a lifetime," says
he. Hanswal has his own studio, and says that singing and
playing the banjo and mouth organ are his other passions.
Engineer-turned-software developer Vikrant Kumar of Pune is
also exhibiting. His passion is travel and landscape
photography, with an emphasis on the Himalayas.
Vitesh Naik, like many other Goans, has returned from a
two-year stint at in Kuwait as an interior designer. His work
is up on display too at Fontainhas.
This festival reminds some of the Mumbai-based 'Kala Ghoda'
festival. In some ways, it's different because of Goa's Latin
flavour that comes from this region's long links with South
Europe via its Portuguese rulers of 451 years.
As the bitterness of the past receeds into the past, it has
been a Portuguese cultural foundation -- Fundacao Oriente --
that has pumped in money to restore the area of Fontainhas,
and in a way, remind Lisbon of its heydey in Goa and in Asia.
Goa's booming tourism trade has given some filip to its
otherwise overlooked art scene. There are today a number of
tiny art galleries. People with diverse backgrounds have
entered the field.
Says Caranzalem-based marine chemist Sushant Naik: "My works
are figurative, though I also paint village life, landscapes
and still life. My passion is sketching with charcoal on
paper. Fortunately I have been able to sell some of my
paintings without any exposure to commercial exhibitions."
Raviraj Naik collects abstracts of Lord Ganesh, and has his
online presence at jaishreeganesh.org Gauri Divan, wife of a
prominent Goan psychiatrist and a pediatrician herself, works
in stoneware, producing tableware for "daily use". She works
from her studio in the village of Penha de Franca, where she
creates "each pot from beginning to end".
Davina Stephens is one of Goa's prominent foreign residents
and artists, also taking part in the exhibition.
On Friday evening, the event was launched with a showman and
pop star Remo Fernandes taking the locality by storm,
releasing his shot-in-Fontainhas music video "Muchacha
Latina" (Latin Woman) at a well-attended event.
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