Life is beautiful

Himmat Shah's slip-cast sculptures explore the beauty of mundane things.

Sculptor Himmat Shah is strong in his condemnation of a society going mad as "we keep ignoring small and beautiful things in life". For Shah has spent his life as a wanderer, stopping at leisure to notice, admire and be spellbound by big and small details of life.

As he recalls the spectacle of "thousands of fireflies together in the dead of the night", or is captivated by "a dried fruit, fallen from a tree for hours" that was carried and stored by him on a shelf for years till he placed it in a terracotta bowl covered in 22-carat gold.

Clay as a medium to explore his creativity chose him rather than Shah choosing it, as "it was the cheapest medium and I had no money". And through his plus-25 years of association with clay, Shah has experimented widely, making and destroying sculptures, "searching for my own technique, craft and language", till "slowly clay starts guiding you, speaks to you as mud has a directness unlike other mediums".

Instead of modelling directly in clay, Shah chose the technique of slip-casting "" rotting the clay to mature it for as long as 10 years till it becomes silk-like. Objects at Sunday flea markets "" bottles, funnels or objects found in nature become his models where Shah creates a mould of the object in plaster and then through a small opening fills the slip in them and then removes the plaster wall. "It's a cast of a cast that one finally sees in the end," says Shah adding, "I am trying to find the plastic value of clay."

But Shah's terracotta sculptures are further characterised by him as he drops and crushes them, fascinated by the broken, weathered look that emerges, transforming the familiar and mundane into something that speaks of having a story to tell.

He even juxtaposes his earthy medium with the glitter of gold. "I like the colour of gold and apply 22-carat gold leaf at times on terracotta. You get a language," explains Shah.

Over the years, Shah has exhibited his work at the Anant Art Gallery in Delhi, where his terracotta sculptures speak of events and incidents, of spaces he lived in and worked in as part of his peregrinations.

Lone standing temples in the Thar desert to the bottle shapes he slip-cast in urban dwellings "" Shah values his life's experiences over his academic training from teachers once he ran away from home at age 11.

From painting landscapes in his early days to winning a Vidyasagar scholarship to becoming a drawing teacher in a small village school to graduating to sculptures, before falling at NS Bendre's feet at Baroda University to request him to him teach art (Bendre's first lesson was to "find it yourself"), Shah has never stopped on his artistic quest.

He learnt the Chinese techniques from a visiting Chinese artist; his modern abstract techniques from an American artist; and has exhibited the burnt paper technique in Europe. The result? He considers he has the "most knowledge about art", and is currently compiling a book on his works with the one terracotta he values and loves most, calling it "a masterpiece gifted to the 20th century by Himmat Shah".

With creativity his religion, Shah feels that each artist is an enigma, confessing that he has never understood anything in this world but can stare at it for hours.

For Shah, "Action is not creativity, nor is inaction; there is something else behind it." As Shah graduates to bronze sculptures, it is with the sadness that "the education system kills creativity", for "beauty cannot be defined and even mundane things are beautiful". Sadly, in the race of life, there are few who stop to admire what Shah has done most of his life.