The fingers of the artist Brinda Pamulapati pull apart splinters of silk. She carefully lays them out on canvas in long strips and starts painting around their edges. A symphony of colors winds outward from the silver and gold brocade borders.
These 50-year-old sarees once belonged to her mother and are now the repurposed focus of her “Saree series”. These mixed media works will be shown in Pamulapati’s solo exhibition “Revitalization” at the Venvi Art Gallery in August.
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The show’s title is a nod to both recycling a family heirloom and its reappearance from quarantine of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s sad that the pandemic brought people home, made people sick and plunged the nation into economic crisis, but it also gave people more time to think through the current state of their lives,” says Pamulapati. “COVID meant taking breaks at home and slowing down, and I revitalized myself and my mind. I was given a different perspective of the world and I had time to meditate. ”
Revision of the Venvi online gallery
Like other cultural organizations around the world, the Venvi Art Gallery closed its doors during the first four months of the pandemic and canceled several exhibitions. During this time, says gallery owner and founder Pamulapati, very few people would call to make appointments, to see or buy artwork on display.
Together with her husband Veernag, she thought about how the gallery could make the art viewing and buying process easier for everyone involved. At this point, Venvi began redesigning its online gallery.
Updates included simplifying the website’s user interface and adding a viewing room where interested customers could see the price and size of the artwork. Another function changes the size of the work so that it is displayed in the correct proportions on the virtual “wall” and can give the viewer an exact idea of what it might look like in their home.
“The best part is that we can reach thousands of people so that both new and seasoned collectors can shop from the comfort of their own homes,” says Pamulapati. “If the show is in a physical gallery, we take pictures of the physical gallery and upload them. When the exhibition is online, we resize the work in relation to the wall, curate it online and publish the walls so that viewers can have a proper perspective of the size and understand what it will look like on the wall. ”
Personal shows, online viewing room
Pamulapati says the “Viewing Room” will soon be moved to a “Current Shows” tab on the website’s home page, making the artwork even easier for online visitors to access. There will also be a rotating banner showing each artwork in the exhibition along with its finer details.
Beyond working in the physical gallery space, this virtual pivot point has enabled the Venvi Art Gallery to be a platform for artists both on-site and outside the Big Bend region. Pamulapati looks forward to curating shows that will only be available online.
At the same time, the gallery will host personal exhibitions such as Mark Messersmith’s “The Lost Garden of Hesperides” in September.
“We curate the physical space according to how one work of art interacts with another,” says Pamulapati. “The work of art will speak for itself and ask where it would like to be, and we try to live up to that. It’s a visual language. ”
Solo exhibition a festival in red, yellow
For her upcoming solo show, Pamulapati continues to speak this language using the movements, textures, and patterns of acrylic paints. She also takes the opportunity to spread out with her mixed media work, creating dynamic paintings inspired by her childhood in India surrounded by colorful clothing and fauna.
In a two-dimensional photograph, “Saree Series # 4” is a celebration of red, yellow and blue tones that build up and cascade in filigree and floral collisions. Pamulapati personally integrates a third, structural dimension by layering the paint in such a way that the canvas becomes just as tactile as the feeling of the silky saree between the fingertips.
Her triptych “1965” uses the saree in Rothko-like contrast by focusing on large blocks of color framed by the vertical and horizontal columns of the fabric.
Pamulapati says when she works on this in the studio it feels like she has fallen into a rabbit hole and is losing track of time and her surroundings. Painting feels different to her daily meditations, in which she feels completely present.
In the studio, minutes become hours and she finds herself transported into a completely different world. Pamulapati continues these creative explorations and remains optimistic about the future and her goals for the Venvi Art Gallery.
“Learning the business has been an endeavor and a learning experience for the past six years, and I was only able to do this because I had a lot of community support and guidance,” says Pamulapati.
“The Tallahassee community has so many resources. We want to continue to be a platform for artists to be creative and to motivate the young generation for art. ”
Amanda Sieradzki is a columnist for the Council on Culture & Arts. COCA is the umbrella agency for art and culture in the capital region (www.tallahasseearts.org).
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When you go
What: Revitalization
When: Opening reception on August 6th, 5-8pm, exhibition open from August 6th to 25th
Where: Venvi Art Gallery, 2901 East Park Avenue.
Costs: Free
Contact: For more information, call 850-322-0965 or visit www.venviartgallery.com.
The post Gallery owner brings heirloom sarees back to life in "Revitalization" first appeared on Daily Florida Press.
from Daily Florida Press https://dailyfloridapress.com/gallery-owner-brings-heirloom-sarees-back-to-life-in-revitalization/
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