Before I decided to wear my sculptures, they were big, bulbous squares of cloth, stuffed and embellished. Over a winter, I went back home to India and found all this very shiny, fabulous cloth and decided that I wanted to do something a little more theatrical. My friend Eric and I, wrapped these sewn shapes around ourselves and added whatever else we could find: a kimono, tassels, cloth birds, bangles and ribbons. I was learning how to sew and to make pom-poms while also discovering sculpture and so here is the very first time, that I started to combine all the things I love.

My friend Pei photographed the project and you can see more of her wonderful work here.

After taking a few classes in sewing, I started making wearable sculptures that changed in shape, as the wearer  moved inside them. I made these two pieces in collaboration with Marcus Morris, a brilliant photographer, and used found objects (including a graduation cape) and the offerings of Ohio Thrift. My friend Christian Cimoroni modelled the pieces for us. A gifted performer and artist, he switched between two characters, one a bit sinister and the other, priest like and revered.                                

To see more of Marcus' stunning work, go here and this is some of the fabulous things Christian works on. They are both such stars!

My thesis show was a lively living room. I borrowed furniture from my friends and painted it, screen printed several feet of wallpaper, made applique cushions and brought together all the false flowers and flashy baubles I could find. The room was meant to enchant and force the viewer to stay and look, and desire the objects inside. 

Kelsey McClellan, a wonderful photographer, classmate and friend photographed the space. Very delicious works here! And, a video of the space by the young and talented Alex Trimpe! Check out his video on printmaking!

I do, do love printed fabrics but they tend to be a bit expensive. Fot this project, I printed my own fabric, and used it to make sculptures. On their own, these pieces are flat rectangles of cloth. I stuff them and by wrapping them around, make new shapes and characters. They are studded with plastic flowers and a lot of mirrors. Ribbon spills! I am a very shy actor and would never want to be in a play. By making things like this, I am able to become any character of my choice, strut and pose and preserve it in a photograph. I am also able to skip between areas of fashion and sculpture and be many things, instead of one!                 

My friend Pei photographed the project and you can see more of her wonderful work here.

This chicken is perhaps the largest piece of linoleum I have ever carved and stands four feet tall. It's only been printed once. Using a recognisable shape, like animals, helps me find a spot to build patterns on. Very soon, the shape itself becomes invisible. Carving linoleum is a very slow process, but it's great because I  am able to make things that are unique to this material. Like in a rubber stamp or even a Halloween pumpkin,  you have to imagine where the lines will be and then carve around it. After carving the white spaces out, you ink the rubber surface that is left and put it through a wonderful printing press. The pressure transfers the ink from the block to the sheet of paper.                           

My very first attempt at carving linoleum, this bug is a mix of many beetles I found on Google Images! I used his body as a base, a source for patterns to spill from.

A linoleum carving filled with fish and my love for chevrons and sticky vines. Made for a printmaking class project.

I made this print while in a relief printing class. I like working with linoleum over wood, mostly because it doesn't splinter. Also, since I work almost exclusively by hand, this is one of the few ways that I can make very clean lines and a sharp image (screen printing also works). Here too, the fish is a container so my patterns have a place to start, though I do find the fish shape to be quite wonderful. And the patterns are in love with Japanese textiles and want to be them, very much!

This school project was perhaps my very earliest attempt at making wallpaper. I draw a lot of patterns by hand and then repeated them over and over, till they went from being flowers and curls to an extremely dense net of shapes. I wanted the result to be very attractive. If you look closer, you may see all sorts of things are not really there. I see a Chinese dragon illustration, especially the nose. Also a very pixelated videogame fire image.

The second in a series of very red, and very patterned screen prints. I made this for a class project, by first drawing the pattern by hand and then repeating it digitally. There are chevrons all over this and yes, it is indeed one of my favourite patterns!

The third in a series of very red, and very patterned screen prints. I made this for a class project, by first drawing the pattern by hand and then repeating it digitally.

I love screen printing very much! To transfer a digital image to a screen, the first thing you need to do is print it out on a plastic sheet. While in school, I would print many of them and because they were so lovely and glossy, I kept them even after they were used. What fascinated me was the kaleidoscopic effect of layering one sheet over another.

My initial experiments with sculpture, fabric and sourcing materials from thrift stores.

I think I just love all things that can be piled, repeated, layered. Things that cover other things up. Because of that and because I had a ceramics class, I started making tiles. This was also the year when I became friends with graphic design students and learnt more about typography. There was so much happening around the Latin script but my very first language, hindi, was something even I had ignored. By researching these letters and then painting them, I learnt a lot of new things, and this is the most fascinating: all the hindi letters are arranged according to the part of the mouth we use to pronounce them. To make these, I first pressed far too many porcelain tiles and fired them. Then I painted the letters on with a black glaze and salt fired them once again, creating a glossy effect.

One summer I had the fantastic opportunity to study with students across the world at the Yale Summer School of Art & Music. We spent six wonderful weeks trying new techniques in things like photo and printmaking. For my first photo project I took picture of reflective surfaces, especially store windows. I was delighted by how the objects collaged themselves with cars and sunlight and began to float, no longer
stuck on stands.

The Columbus College of Art & Design hosts a wonderful fashion show every spring. This year they published a lookbook featuring the work of the graduating designers and commissioned artists to create work inspired by the garments. I was very happy to create a dizzy wallpaper using images of the designer, Amanda Smith’s lovely pieces.

Model and garment photographs by Kelsey McClellan. 

Pots! I had just learned how to make small ceramic vessels and had begun to draw lovely diagrams of what future pots may look like. I’m afraid I never made them, but I did make a set of drawings of bowls and vases and cups, that I would like to see in real life. The patterns were a challenge, given the size (each pot is the size of the average human thumb) but oh so much colour!

One December night, my friends Christian and I stayed up quite late. We watched the Stepford Wives, practiced some emotive dancing and then draw faces and birds as cards for Christmas. Each bird is filled with patterns that follow the shapes of its feathers and come with an imaginary sound it may make. Coo.

A set of repeatable pattens made from Mughal flower motifs. I drew each motif by hand and the mirrored it and repeated it, till it became its own shape.