Bhubaneswar: With paint brush in hand and ideas buzzing in head, young artist Soumya Jena, sketched the popular ‘Baula’ story of the cow and calf with the tiger, splashing vibrant colours on one side and painting its shadow on the other side of the wall. With this painting, he depicted Odisha’s popular Shadow Puppetry during Smart Park Art Work session at the redeveloped BDA Park in Saheed Nagar on Sunday morning.
“Parks being a place frequented by people, I thought of putting the culture of our state on the wall. It is limited to very few people now and slowly dying. There’s dire need to revive it by all means, and this painting is my way of doing it,” said an excited Soumya.
While beside him, Pinaki Mohanty was busy bringing alive birds on the walls while trying to educate all, that parks are not only meant for human beings, but also for birds and animals.
It was a first-of-its-kind public art event in Odisha capital to foster public art and community participation.
Children from the locality and other parts of the city participated. Syed Ahmed, a LKG student, was the youngest artist, who said he loves painting while colouring the heritage animal of Odisha, Elephant.
Painting outside her home for the first time, Amrita Gantayat said events such as these help connect youngsters and artists while little ones also get a chance to exhibit their skills. “It also gives an opportunity to all budding artists to showcase their talent,” she added.
Similarly, Swayam Prakash Mohanty, a young architect from BUKC of BDA, who makes doodles and abstract art as a hobby, painted one of the walls with his unique abstract art form on the concept ‘Robot in the Wild’.
In total, the Smart Park has 12 designated walls for murals and graffiti, which are now splashed with colours on the broader theme ‘Art for Relaxation’ or ‘Art as Therapy’. The varieties of themes picked by the artists spanned from art installations using pieces of terracotta tiles to depicting shadow puppetry on the walls, meditating Buddha and abstract forms of modern and contemporary art. Nearly 100 children of different age groups along with city officials, community members and general citizens welded brushes to beautify the park.
“We have been doing a lot of public art in the city from flyovers to public toilets to railway station platforms. This is for the first time that we have undertaken painting in a park, where people have the leisure to appreciate art. Also, this being a community park, the public would be engaging with art on a regular basis,” said Sujit Mahapatra, founder of Bakul Foundation, which was the art partner for this programme.
Bhubaneswar Urban Knowledge Centre (BUKC) of the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA), which had designed smart parks, was the knowledge partner for this activity organised by Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) as part of Street Art and Mural Project (STAMP).
Three more child-friendly Smart Parks in Saheed Nagar will soon be inaugurated formally.
