घोंसलाGhonsla
Fragments pressed and set into a mud wall, taking their texture from the inside of a bird's nest. The wall is combed by hand before anything goes into it, so the surface the pieces sit in is worked as much as the pieces themselves.
Selected work
Made out of the ground they stand on.
Each piece turns here as a drawing you can spin with a finger. The photographs, taken in the studio or on site, are one tap away.
आशियानाAashiyana
Built strand over strand rather than thrown or cast, so the form keeps the record of how it was made. Nothing is sanded back afterwards: a coil that still reads as a coil is the only account of how the piece came to exist.
आनंदमAnandam
A structure you climb rather than look at, lashed at every crossing and left open to the sky. At twenty-eight inches deep and fifteen feet tall it is the tallest thing I have built, and it holds two people in its frame at once.
रचनाRachna
I built it by hand and then let go of it. Earth walls, a woven bamboo ceiling and thatch reaching almost to the ground, raised on the site it stands on. The vines arrived on their own and have been taking it back ever since, which is a better ending than the one I would have written for it.
Process
Fire gets a say in it.
Wood firing is a conversation between flame, ash, atmosphere and clay. The kiln is stacked, lit and fed for as long as it takes, and what comes out carries marks nobody chose.
Before any of that there is the floor. A panel is laid out flat and worked where it lies, for as many days as it needs, and almost none of those days show afterwards. That is the slow half, and it is most of the work.
The unpredictability is the point. I build by hand at my own pace, then hand the piece to something that will not take instruction.
So I leave the evidence in. A coil that still reads as a coil, or a side the ash ran darker than the other. Sanding that out would be tidying away the only account of how the thing came to exist.