It's all art on this paper

takes a closer look at an artist who is using cast paper to give vent to her creative abilities.

Zarina Hashmi makes no attempt to hide her love for a special medium "" paper. And she loves to play with the form and structure "" "I love geometry. The shapes and the forms excite me," she says.

So be it prints, cast from paper pulp or even etchings, the forms conform to varied shapes in squares, triangles, rectangles or for that matter circles ... and even at places where the geometry breaks, it is difficult to miss the allegiance to lines and notches. The art provokes. Or is it the craft? "For me it's not very different. If you don't know your craft, you cannot have your art. The same rule applies to all "" be it artists, weavers or even journalists," she says.

Based in New York, Zarina's love story with paper began roughly over four decades ago. Born in Aligarh, Zarina went on to study printmaking. But it was only after she returned from Paris (after study with S W Hayter at Atelier 17) she began to experiment with the varied forms.

"After my return from Paris (this was sometime in 1980) I found it very difficult to work with Indian paper. I was so used to working with French paper. My search led me to Khadi Gram Udyog Bhawan where I came across handmade paper. That had me interested and I was keen to add another dimension to paper," she says.

A new dimension she did add, but only after her trip to Sanganer in Rajasthan, where she got inspired by the way the paper was being made. The sight of liquid paper pulled on screens from vats made her realise the potential of paper pulp as a casting medium ""and an ingenious technique was born.

"It was really fascinating to see the casts take the shape of sculpture "" the way it jumped out of the moulds, shrinking a little "" and what made it even more fascinating was that the colours were all a part of the liquid paper.

Zarina worked with this medium for 10 years "" between 1979 and 1989. In 1990, she went back to etching and did a series of portfolios for 14 years. The Gallery Espace show of "Home is a Foreign Place" in 2000 was her first show in India after an absence of 15 years.

Now, Zarina is back with another show "" "Kaghaz ke Ghar/Paper Houses" "" which reviews her images in cast paper from 1979-99. All the works in this exhibition are made of paper, most of them cast from paper pulp, some cut from printed paper and others print. The show is on at the gallery, till February 10.

What sets Zarina's work apart is that she has not let herself get confined to a medium and has no hesitation in taking the help of readymade material like a plastic punch bowl or plasticine as a mould to set plaster.

She, however, insists that natural mediums remain the closest to her heart. "It's all right as far as you have your form right. That is all that matters," she says. Very true!