VIZAG: Certainly a good news for the art lovers because the city got its new art gallery at The Park Hotel-Hastakshar Art and Craft on Thursday. The gallery is a one stop destination for the people where they can find works of renowned and emerging artists in the city.
It has a collection of over 25 paintings and sculptures depicting different themes by 17 local artists. Some artists have put up their collection depicting the life of a woman, Indian mythology, view of coastal belt, peace posture of Buddha and several others,
“Mine is paper sculpture. It is made of plain paper which is called cansim paper. It usually takes 20 days to one month to complete one piece. Now in the gallery I have put up two pieces, one is Buddha and another a little girl carrying her dog,” said Moka Satish Kumar, an artist.
Whereas, KS Kamesh put up his piece which is a scene of Kaliya Mardanam from the mythological story Krishna Leela. ”My paintings are usually made in the geometrical shapes, including this. I have started this series recently and trying to complete it in six months,” Kamesh added.
Sharing their views on why Visakhapatnam is their new destination, Hastakshar Art and Craft director Prashant Sethia said, “The aim of Hastakshar is to give the local talent a chance and get their works appreciated by the city people. Visakhapatnam is a city where there is no art gallery for people to come and buy paintings and sculptures of local artists. As everybody knows many great artists are from Andhra University who are known for their works and thus Visakhapatnam has huge talent and they just need a platform. Now, the city has artists who have been doing good work and well-known and some are emerging artists, so all they need is to reach out to the people and we want to help them out with this.” “We will also try to include the works of other artists from various places which will be like a cultural exchange but concentration will be on the local artists. Besides the art gallery in the lobby of the hotel, we will try to come up with some workshops and activities in the future where we can really educate people on the art.
Hastakshar is a young start-up which aims to promote visual arts and the new permanent gallery at Visakhapatnam is their fourth destination after Goa airport, Guwahati airport and Vivanta by Taj, Guwahati. At present, Hastakshar gallery has works of Ravi Kattakuri, Simhachalam Dollu, Sandhya Chowdari, Srinivas Padakandla, Sharmla Karri, Tirupati Rao, Moka Satish Kumar, Naresh Mohanta, Govind, T Ramesh, Ramana Murty, Ramakrishna, Raja Ramesh, Srinivas Manda, Rashmi Trivedi, Preeti Parmar and Shivakumar.