Plus

Arts

Zen and the art of working with wood
The Alliance française de Kandy, will host Olga Dimitri's second exhibition 'Wooden Galaxy' in Kandy from May 21 to May 28. The exhibition will be opened by Prof. Ashley Halpé, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Peradeniya.

Why this fascination for wood? The artist explains: "I was always obsessed with wood. I become entranced just looking at it, not to mention working with it. Even my first memory is related to wood. It is a memory of falling in love with an old wooden wall, its tarnished logs, its blackened patterns weaving into untold epics. And it loved me back. I just stood there, gaping, transfixed by our love. It's one of those moments that last forever. I see infinity when I look at wood.

"Kandy influenced me a lot. When I came to live on my husband's tea estate close to the city in '93, I was overwhelmed. Kandy is truly spiritual, without any of the new age nonsense. Paranormal activity, rich culture, a strong diversity of religious influence, both good and bad and a mystic atmosphere in general. You can imagine what all this is like after the cold and bleak concrete metropolis, Moscow. And of course, staying at the estate was incredibly self-revealing. Nature is all around and that always helps one to reconnect with one’s true self.

"I began experimenting with wood in those early days when I lived on the estate. I discovered many wooden planks, corroded by termites, on one of the long-unused floors in my husband's factory. This intensified those incredible patterns, tones and colour gradations on wood that always fascinated me. Soon after this discovery, my husband, removed several of these planks for me to work on. And there it began.

"When I moved into Colombo, about a year later, the concept was swept away by other things, and it was only several years later that I started getting into it again, exploring it in a variety of ways. At present, it is the principal medium of what I do.

“It's a family trait, I guess, this longing for nature. My father and grandfather were famous agriculturists. My husband connects to nature through his scientific exploration of tea plants. My sons, connect through whitewater rafting and adventure tour guiding. For myself, I discovered wood to be the best representative for this experience of natural reconnection.

"Wood is universal to nature; it contains all the forces of nature within itself. Instead of focusing on carving pieces of wood into something, or using them merely as a foundation for a painting, I began doing things to expose the natural state of the wood. In other words, I use paint and sometimes use woodcarving techniques to highlight what is already there. Paint is the background; wood is the foreground. As an old proverb says 'nature is the best artist'; it only needs some publicity, which is what I do.

"A lot of influence came from the so-called Group Zero which, to badly oversimplify, was a 60's art movement in Germany that focused on representing natural forces through colour alone, especially monochrome. Their manifesto was 'zero is silence; zero is the beginning; zero is round; zero rotates'. You can say the same thing about wood. It is something fundamental and essential.

"I would not call my work minimalist, although it certainly is very Zen because of how I try to absorb the observer into the experience of nature. I try to make each painting, each composition into a little door that opens up for the observer a different world, a world so easily lost in our frantic urban lives."

Fusion pianist back with a new mix
By Madhubhashini Ratnayake
One of the foremost pianist in the country, perhaps one of the few in Asia who are experimenting with the instrument, trying to give an Asian flavour to its predominantly Western aura - Harsha Makalanda–will hold a concert after a long silence of about eight years at the Punchi Theatre on May 23, at 7 p.m.

The evening will feature Harsha's characteristic style of fusing jazz elements with Asian and Sri Lankan styles of music - and leading exponents of their respective fields like Ravibandhu Vidyapati on Sri Lankan percussion, Alston Joachim on Bass Guitar, Shiraz Noor Amith on Western drums, Nesan Thiagarajan on Indian percussion will accompany Harsha on the piano. Three new compositions by Harsha will also be featured along with pieces that these musicians performed at the Asian Jazz Yatra Festival in India in 2002.

There are many aspects to this musician, who is a performer, composer and a teacher. "I would like to be known as a person who is trying to create an Asian style - in concept and in technique - on the piano," says Harsha. "Both those aspects are important if one is trying to create a new style."

Given the instrument, this has not been an easy task, he admits and says that he has been trying to master a new technique for years - one being, for example - the attempt to create a sruti effect or a half tone effect very familiar to Indian musicians, on the piano, getting other notes to overlap the main note. He tries these with techniques like using the half pedal and seeks to create effects like that of the tanpura on piano.

With regard to conceptual changes, he gives an example of the concept of time in Western and Sri Lankan music. "Here in Sri Lankan music, specially with regard to drumming - with regard to the perahera or our ritualistic theatre, for example - there is a much more flexible attitude to the concept of time. It is much more elastic, it can cease in the middle and start again, and there is not much strictness attached to it. But like there is no strict time for the sun to rise every morning though it does so in perfect harmony with nature each time it does rise, there is no problem in having such a flexible attitude to time in Sri Lankan drumming either. This flexibility and ease, is something that I carry over to my playing of jazz on the piano, for it is very suitable to that style.

His influences with regard to his attempts to create new techniques are many, says Harsha, for he listens to various kinds of music and learns from many sources. Trained as a Western classical pianist, Western music influences are very great; then world famous Western musicians like Horowitz or Leonard Bernstein; Eastern musicians like Ravi Shankar, Amjad Ali Khan and Hari Prasad Chaurasia; and musicians here, the older generation as well as his contemporaries like Ravibandhu Vidyapati on drums, Pradeep Ratnayake on sitar, Ananda Dabare and Lakshman Joseph de Saram on violin, all of whom are trying to develop their own unique styles of playing, are influences, he says.

"All the musicians who play with me are my strength and my inspiration," says Harsha. "In fact, if not for the small group of players that are involved in this kind of music, who play together and keep it going, it would be difficult for us to survive in this country, for our kind of music is not what is often projected by the audio-visual media."

To engage in this kind of attempt to give a different character to an instrument, it is imperative that one first has a traditional training in that instrument says Harsha. He still plays Beethoven for his own satisfaction, inspiration, and for the development of his techniques, though "my conscience does not allow me to play only that in public and get away with it," he says.

Harsha has also made a distinctive mark in this country as a composer. His piano concerto Swara Sangha Vannama was performed twice by the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka. He is also one of the leading film music directors of the younger generationTickets for his concert are now available at the Punchi Theatre in Borella.

Back to Plus