Sea Turtle - Shibori Art Piece(20" by 16")

Recently I was part of a handmade collective here in Bangalore called ‘A Hundred Hands’ and this year’s theme was ‘The wonders of water’. After scouring the internet for inspirational pictures and articles, two things came to mind. One is the scarcity of this valuable resource that we seem to take for granted every day, however more importantly I was struck by how we have been ruining our seas and rivers one inch at a time, and If I really thought about it, I’m a 100% certain that I have contributed to the floating rafts of plastic waste that is slowly killing off all our marine life, after all I don’t know where the waste goes after It leaves my home.  As someone who has the Sea flowing through almost every aspect of ones life, this revelation struck home. Ever since my birth, I have always been around water, mostly the Sea.  I’ve been fortunate enough to meet a large variety of marine life, out of all that I’ve seen, my favorite will always be the sea turtle.

I decided to make A Shibori art piece depicting a Sea turtle swimming calmly through the water sans the plastic waste.  Shibori is such a great medium when it comes to making these pieces, the textures and patterns that are achievable are so unique, you can get a 3 dimensional quality just by tying your cloth in a particular way. Like the sun’s rays coming through the water, and the dense quality of the sea bed below the turtle.

Most of the time I don’t know how a piece will look till it’s done, I’m positive that my love for the sea inspired this piece, and had a lot to do with the way it turned out.