CAVA

Jan 9

Bhagya in front of CAVA entrance

Drinking Tender Coconut

On Saturday, CAVA (The Chamarajendra Academy of Visual Arts), the school here in Mysore where Bhagya teaches, students helped to put up a show of my gouaches. The building reminds me of the building the grad students used to work in at the University of Iowa, old and shabby and charming. I was really amazed at how my framed gouaches (18 pieces framed) looked on the mottled cream white walls that haven't been painted in eons. Like they had been waiting to be hung there.

The students are very sweet, shy and enthusiastic to have a guest. They seem to appreciate my work and are eager enough to participate in assigned collaborative group artist book projects. The whole painting department consists of several rooms where students work during the day. Instead of chairs, or in addition to them, they spread patterned rugs on the floor.

Students have to leave by 4:30 pm and some of them have a commute, so with classes and exams, they don’t have a lot of studio time.

After spending the day there, Bhagya and I walked through town (I begged not to be driven, which is luxurious, but makes me feel so cut off from the world), and we had a great time chatting away as we shopped for tops and buying things like roasted peanuts in recycled paper cones and fresh garbanzo beans still on the stalk from sidewalk vendors and. The whole day was quite nice. After dinner, with Bhagya and three of her kids, Ardash, Agnika and Asmita, we watched a bollywood movie. So kitschy but fun to watch.