Handyman
Story 09
|
Dad was an enthusiastic amateur carpenter, mason, and bricklayer. He liked to work with his hands. He renovated many of our homes as our family moved more than 25 times over his lifetime. He started with our first home in 1950 where he single-handedly installed a brick fireplace in the front room on the ground floor with an exterior brick chimney rising to the rooftop above the second floor. He would never tire of telling and retelling the challenges he faced, and how perfectly he managed to engineer the updraft so that the fire burned evenly and without any smoke in the front room.
Mom was a talented artist. Like Dad, she was good with her hands, too. An oil painter, seamstress, and flower gardener. She loved to turn toss-aways into something interesting and beautiful. So naturally, Dad and Mom encouraged Karen and me to get our hands dirty in hobbies and crafts that we all enjoyed. We spent many hours together working on “projects”. Often the journey was much more satisfying than the destination. |
|
When we moved to India in 1975, I was fascinated by the medieval souks of Hyderabad and set out to discover anything about ancient crafts of the area. I stumbled on fascinating old recipes for natural dyes. Dyes created from flower petals, roots, lichen, crushed stone, spices, and other herbal substances. I set up a studio at home, with lots of encouragement from Dad and Mom, to find a way to create something out of these dyes. This led to experimentation with batik painting. I used natural Indian cotton cloth as the base, local bees wax as the dye repelling agent, and herbal dyes as my palette of colours. In planning a painting, one needed to work in reverse from the lightest to the darkest hue, one dye bath at a time, applying liquid wax in between to freeze the dye along the detailed drawing behind the painting.
Once a piece was done, Dad did his part to build the wooden frame, sometimes as large as 2 x 5 metres. He carefully stretched the dampened cloth over the edges of the frame to create a smooth tight painting.
Mom became our art critic and marketing agent. She spread the word through her network of friends, and soon returned with commissioned orders from many new clients. And she started to put a price tag on each piece, something both Dad and I had trouble doing. Eventually, we had more than 100 clients from India, USA, Brazil, Australia, France, Canada, et al. And our teamwork helped offset a significant portion of my college tuition fees.
Once a piece was done, Dad did his part to build the wooden frame, sometimes as large as 2 x 5 metres. He carefully stretched the dampened cloth over the edges of the frame to create a smooth tight painting.
Mom became our art critic and marketing agent. She spread the word through her network of friends, and soon returned with commissioned orders from many new clients. And she started to put a price tag on each piece, something both Dad and I had trouble doing. Eventually, we had more than 100 clients from India, USA, Brazil, Australia, France, Canada, et al. And our teamwork helped offset a significant portion of my college tuition fees.