Setting up portrait sculptures encapturing a personality as such is one of the best ways to commemorate the person. And sculptor Gurukulam Babu has a big role in bringing the great personalities alive in the minds of school students in Kozhikode.
Be it Vaikom Mohammed Basheer’s portrait sculpture at Meenchanda Government Girls Higher Secondary School or that of Herman Gundert at Malabar Christian College Higher Secondary School or Mahatma Gandhi’s portrait at Melady SBN Government Upper Primary School, the portraits all are the sculptor’s works. He has also made a lot many sculptures, apart from portraits at numerous schools. He has just completed the portrait of Guruvarananda Swami for Swami Guruvarananda Government Higher Secondary School, Kolathur, and is now working on a portrait of former President A P J Abdul Kalam.
“Recreating a person as such through sculptures is actually a real challenge and gets me great satisfaction. I feel like getting an opportunity to be with the great personalities while making them. Though I am a mural artist and painter and make sculptures other than portraits, none of them give the pleasure and satisfaction that I get from making portrait sculptures. Besides, getting opportunities to make them for children is further an excitement, for which I often charge just the material cost,” says Gurukulam Babu.
While a seven-feet sculpture of a mother and child set up at CCUP School, Iyyad, where Babu works as drawing teacher, is his first sculpture, the first portrait is the full portrait of Vaikom Mohammed Basheer installed at Meenchanda GHSS. “Apart from my first portrait sculpture, the portrait set up at Meenchanda School in 2009 is Basheer’s first portrait sculpture,” claims the artist.
Gurukulam Babu also makes sand sculptures and has even incorporated school students in depicting ‘Gajendra Moksham’, a tale with elephant and crocodile as characters, at Kozhikode beach. He also made a sand portrait of Rajiv Gandhi during the Martyrdom Day, this year.
The sculpture of a reading girl set up at Cheekkilodu Government UP School, the sculpture titled ‘Adwaitham’ that presents the importance of taking care of elderly parents, etc. are his other well-acclaimed sculptures.