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saturday school – week 7
heer was the daughter of a wealthy family in india. she fell in love with the flute-playing ranjha. she was arranged to marry another and on her wedding day a jealous uncle poisoned her wedding laddu (an indian sweet). upon hearing this, ranjha takes a bite of the same laddu and dies by her side.
this story was written in the 1700s. other areas of the world have their own love stories, layla and majnu, orpheus and eurydice, romeo and juliet… i love these kinds of stories because they persevere through centuries, generations, cultures because (i believe) we all believe in the power of love.
happy saturday! ^_^
feels like home
this one is for my mom, who taught me to love chai – happy birthday mom!
saturday school – week 3
India has been in the news a lot recently, for things that are happening everywhere. Even reading and absorbing the information hurts and I find it hard to maintain the belief that we live in a beautiful world… Maybe I have a simplistic view of life but I often find simple things are true. Women are no less important than men. Violence will cause pain. We have an impact greater than we understand. All living creatures deserve respect.
I believe its time to overwhelm the news with positivity. We’re overdue.
saturday school – week 2
last week was truly a new experience. as soon as i posted i felt relieved but also incredibly unprepared. i spent some time researching hand lettering and realized i lacked the right tools… so i visited the art store.
also in conversation with friends this week, we talked about the limited amount of hindi calligraphy and fonts. the conversation made me even more excited to play and explore. one of the seeming limitations with hindi is the bar connecting the words. as i worked on this week’s lettering, i was thinking about how music flows and connects. so i decided to play with hindi and keep all the words connected with a single bar.
happy saturday!
(more about saturday school here)
saturday school
as the new year begins, so do new projects. i’ve always been a fan of handwriting, language and the intersection of words and art. i wanted to create something that combined learning hindi, both spoken and written, with phrases that are uplifting and applicable to life. this is how the idea of saturday school formed! i’ve never created text based art like this so i presume i will hit bumps along the way, but i hope to learn, grow and challenge myself over the next 52 weeks.. and ultimately come out a stronger artist. i am partnering with my mom (which is also super fun!) because my writing in hindi is less than perfect.
here are my guiding principles for saturday school:
1. have fun!
2. create from traditional media (i will hand letter the phrase, clean and color in photoshop)
3. highlight the beauty of hindi
4. work on something off the computer weekly
5. approach it from the understanding that translation and language is not fixed, but fluid
6. secretly teach the hubbahubba hindi ^_^
each week i will post a new phrase written in devanagari, romanized hindi, and english. the spelling of romanized hindi is often disputed, my only hope is that it will help anyone wanting to say the words aloud.
hindi is a beautiful language.