Rupankar Bhattacharjee (in picture, left) and Rahul Saikia were sitting at their stall at Metropolis Urban Winter Festival with a collection of their creations. A visitor may not find the works unusual at first but a closer look at the creations can be overwhelming.
The young artists from Guwahati said they are self-taught and did not get a chance to go to an art college. In fact, Bhattacharjee said he is a student of Commerce.
Saikia was busy making a wall decoration with twigs and rope when this correspondent met the duo. The finished products, complete with colourful threads and feathers, were lazily swinging in the winter afternoon breeze.
There were rows of notebooks lying on the table — each a sheaf of white pages bound by hand-painted hard covers — waiting to be explored. Saikia, an artist who specialises in street art and murals, unmindfully said the notebooks and the wall-hangers were his creations. His Instagram page says he is a dropout and self-taught artist.
There were miniature structures of motorbikes encased in glass boxes on the other side of the table. They looked ordinary but the right eyes can detect the intricacies of the structures. All these miniatures were made from metal scraps.
Bhattacharjee, the creator, is a miniature artist and has keen interest in Cosplay and installation art. “I have made two installations for the festival one of which is a bike. Besides these on display, I have other miniatures too, one less than 1.3 cm,” the young artist said as he pointed at a small glass cylinder mounted on a tiny plywood platform. A toothpick with a black “something” on top could be visible to the naked eyes. But Bhattacharjee encouraged to look deep into the cylinder and before doing that, gave a pair of special spectacles. The glasses made the picture clear.
It was a hoolock gibbon sitting on a toothpick, a less than 1.3 cm miniature. “I am not sure whether mine is the smallest miniature art so I am apprehensive about approaching the Guinness Book of World Records. I make the miniatures with naked eyes and the glasses are for others,” said Bhattacharjee, who was participating in a festival for the first time.
When asked how he managed art with studies, he said with a mischievous smile, “B.Com students do not study so much.”
Surprises like Bhattacharjee and Saikia were part of the festival where paper masse figurines, hand-painted gamosas, 3D photography exhibition and local handicrafts could be an experience. The youth fiesta, which came to Shillong for the first time this year, concluded on Saturday.
~ NM
