N.B. Nair
Bhubaneswar (Inspirational India): Poverty drove the 10–11-year-old Sudarsan Pattnaik to work as a domestic help at a neighbour’s home, in the locality where he lived in a dilapidated home in Puri, Odisha on the shores of the Bay of Bengal.
The famished boy, was keen in drawing and colouring. But since colour pencils and drawing papers were beyond his reach, he made the Puri beach his canvas during free times. It was the tourists, who roamed around the beach, who noticed the artist in him and appreciated the fire in the belly of the impoverished boy and encouraged him.
“I worked at a tea stall and a shop selling beetle-nuts and in between continued to make sand arts, though it had no commercial value. I was satisfied that at least people came and appreciated my art form,” recalled Sudarsan Pattnaik.
The young Sudarsan had no idea about sand art or sand sculptures outside his world. It was some tourists, who told him about world championship in sand arts. Some even took his photographs and sculptures on sand and introduced him to organisers of sand art championships abroad.
“I had not known, it was an internationally known art form, and world championships were held abroad like sporting events in our country. Some tourists who happened to see my sand art on the Puri beach, took its photographs and introduced me to organisers of sand arts abroad. Though I received invitations from them to participate, I had no wherewithal to travel, and no one came forward to sponsor me,” Pattnaik told Inspirational India.
Pattnaik’s first travel abroad was in 1998 to London, when the organisers of a World Travel Mart sponsored his travel and other expenses.
“It was there I saw huge sand sculptures and observed their techniques. The difference between my sculptures and their sculptures was, I had created sculptures on socially relevant issues of the time, whereas foreign artists were not able to connect their sculptures to people and their issues. This helped in getting attention of the juries and media there to my sand sculptures,” he said.
“We have no dearth of artists, but we do not encourage artists from every field,” Pattnaik talked about the support artists in rural India gets. “We should encourage different rural arts like sports. I faced a lot of difficulty in getting acceptance for sand arts as sand art was not an accepted art form. It was only after 2014, when I received Padma award, people started accepting Sand Sculpture as an art form. Until then, it was treated as ‘installation art.’
Pattnaik talked about the hardships he faced to get sand arts noticed in art exhibitions. “I have travelled to places in third class compartment of trains, sleeping on the floor on newspapers.”
“In my long journey, I have gone through difficult times, struggled in life since childhood. The first invitation to travel abroad came from the US. When I told my friends and neighbours, they chided me ‘You are working in someone’s house, do you know where America is…?’ I could not get a visa to visit the US, due to my financial background as a domestic servant. But I received sponsorship from the US, when I started winning awards,” he looked back.
In 1999, Pattnaik went to London for the Cricket World Cup at the invitation of the organisers to display sand art in the stadium. “That was a big turning point in my life and people across the world started noticing Sand Art.”
Pattnaik participated in over 50 international Sand Sculpture Exhibitions out of which he won 27. He won the World title at USF World Sand Sculpture Championship held at Berlin in 2008. Since then, he is a regular participant in almost all international art festivals.
“I am in this field of art for the past 35 years. All these years, I have received positive responses from people and art connoisseurs. I am now trying to bring changes in this art form to sustain the interest of people, like mix and match with other materials. For instance, an idol of Goddess Durga was made with sand, fruits, and vegetables. In Karnataka, I made an idol of Goddess Durga with sand and lemon. It is very essential to bring in changes in the art form as people expect changes,” said the artist.
“We have also made a huge Tomato Santa Claus installation during 2022 Christmas with sand and tomato at Gopalpur beach. The 27 feet high, 60 feet wide sand and tomato sculpture used 1.5 tonnes of tomato, besides sand. My students also joined me in completing the sculpture.”
During the initial days, he used only the brown sand on the beach for the sculptures. But now he uses colour sand to give a different visual treat to the viewers.
Initially, the sculptures were flat on the ground; gradually he made it straight up to the astonishment of viewers. They started wondering, how a sand sculpture could be made in stand-up form. “During my visits abroad, I made sand sculptures of the height of 20-25 feet,” he said.
As sand art received recognition beyond Odisha, the state government started an international sand art festival, inviting artists from across the world and made Pattnaik its brand ambassador. The state government also made him President of the Lalit Kala Akademi for two terms. Though Sudarsan Pattnaik received only elementary education, the art gave him laurels and took to greater heights. He was given honorary doctorate by Berhampur University. On 8 November 2023, Sri Sri University has bestowed a doctorate on him. “It is all due to my commitment to sand art,” he admitted.
Since 1994, Pattnaik has been training children in sand art and opened a school for it. “I also encourage girls, who face opposition from their families to come to the beaches to take training in sand sculpture.”
Pattnaik now started working on a series of paintings, using sand and colour paints. He wants his sand art to remain in the drawing rooms of art aficionados as a decoration forever instead of the “sand castles and sculptures on the beaches.”
Image courtesy: Sudarsan Pattnaik