What do people do with their old stamps, bills, receipts, and papers of the bygone era? This question always interested Bakula Nayak, a graphic designer.
She had been collecting vintage papers for a while. But Bakula did not want to simply hoard them. She wanted to make something out of them.
“I decided to give them a new life. I drew funny and eccentric characters to remind people to enjoy the little things in life that they usually miss,” she says.
Her recent art exhibition, at Kynkyny art, had a series of illustrations of pen and ink drawings that captured her longing for the romance of the old things. Make art... Make love... Make tea was her first solo exhibition which ended on Tuesday. But her drawings are still on display at the venue.
“I love to build stories through the papers I collected. Aged beautifully, they form the perfect canvas to interpret the reality of my world -- an unfinished inventory of my day dreaming, my love for all things vintage. They also reflect my insane desire for romance, aesthetics, poetics and seduction in everything,” Bakula says.
She feels that her initiative has got people more interested in these papers, who might have otherwise dismissed it as junk that collects dust.
With no surety if the drawings would remain on these papers forever, she moves with the flow since every part of the paper reacts differently. The exhibition is titled so because those were the things she had forgotten to do in the last decade, she confesses. “I think I live in an alternate world where I don’t have time for hobbies,” she says.
She used to draw as a child but couldn’t continue. After she became a mother of three, there was little time for it.
While recalling her past she turns nostalgic. “Oh the beautiful places I have visited, the wonderful people I have had conversation with and the awesome things I did... all that comes to my mind when I drink tea.”
The chaos within her, she feels, might be a danger to her ordinary life that revolves around her work, husband and three kids. “One day they collided in my illustrations and it became extraordinary,” she says.
She feels that people these days have become functional: “They have stopped smelling roses. They are beginning to lose their hobbies.” She believes that hobbies like drawing and poetry can make life better. She hopes that her art takes people into a space of speculation, brings a smile and some romance into their lives. “Instead of complaining about the rains they should enjoy it,” she concludes.