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IAAC Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art of the Diaspora 2014
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ARTIST STATEMENT
This series, Journeys, is an ongoing search for meaning in my spiritual journey from the microcosm to the macrocosm. My focus has been on the journeys we make where there are no visible borders. These boundaries are in our minds and can be erased only when we put our differences past us and feel the interconnectedness. Using symbols, I have been trying to understand concepts that are simple yet profound.
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| BIO |
Shanthi Chandrasekar was born and brought up in Tamil Nadu, India. She studied Physics at Women’s Christian College, Chennai and then her Masters in Psychology from Annamalai University, Chidambaram.
Shanthi is a self-taught artist who has been drawing and painting since early childhood. Her interest in understanding different media has led her to experiment with sculpture, photography, printmaking and papermaking. She has also been trained in the traditional art forms of Kolam drawing, Tanjore Style painting and Joomchi Korean papermaking. While many of her works are influenced by her Indian heritage, her true inspiration comes from the mystery and majesty of the world around her; her muse lives where the scientific overlaps with the spiritual.
Shanthi’s works have been displayed in a variety of locations through the Washington D.C. area, and she has won numerous awards for her paintings as well as her sculptures. She won the Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award 2013 for Works on Paper. She was awarded the Individual Artist grants from the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, MD in 2009 and 2013. She also won the Maryland Traditions Master Apprentice Award to teach the Indian art form of Kolam in 2010.
Shanthi won the gold and the fan favorite medals in a competition conducted by the District of Columbia Arts Center called the DC Art Decathlon in 2012. She was one of the four semifinalists selected to work on any theme in ten different media during a period of six months. The ten media specified by the gallery were drawing, painting, collage, photography, sculpture, printmaking, fiber art, conceptual art, audio and video. Commentators who were assigned by the gallery covered the progress on a blog (http://dcacdecathlon.wordpress.com/). As a result of this competition, she was awarded a solo show in January-February of 2013, and James W. Mahoney was the curator for the show. Shanthi continued on the decathlon theme for the show titled Journeys and created work in the ten different media. Mark Jenkins wrote a review for the show in the Washington Post dated 1st February 2013 (http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-01-31/entertainment/36656190_1_kolam-paintings-drawings).
Apart from the above awards, Shanthi also won the Best in Show and the Urquhart Awards in the Art League juried shows in 2012 at the Torpedo Factory in VA. Her artwork was selected for the Bridges Math Art show in conjunction with the international conference held in 2012 at Towson University and was part of a travelling exhibition Erasing Borders by the Indo-American Arts Council, NY. She also participated in the Artomatic shows in 2012, 08 and 07. She had a solo show of drawings on paper titled Red Dots at the Art League in VA in 2011.
She is currently the exhibits director for the galleries at the Takoma Park Community Center. She offers classes and workshops and is a teaching artist listed on the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County roster. She works from her studio at Pyramid Atlantic, Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring in Maryland.
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