Tuesday, 27 March 2012

Sand Sculpture: Uniquness of Orissa's Sand Art

I have spent most of my childhood in capital city of Orissa i.e. Bhubaneswar. Whenever Dad use to get time, we use to visit Puri which was 60Km from Bhubaneswar. Puri is famous Lord Jagannath temple and being a kid after visiting temple me and my brother’s aim use to be go to beach where we can play with sea water and construct our own little castle. Once when we went to Puri beach, I saw a person doing a similar stuff (making something with sand) like us. I and my brother got curious and started looking at this person. By 20 minutes, I can see a beautiful mermaid made of sand in front of our eyes. I was speechless with his creativity. That was my first encounter with sand art of Orissa.


Sand art in Orissa is one of the famous art forms of the state. Sand Art is a distinctive type of art form of Puri in Orissa, which is usually depicted at the seashore. This form of art, is unique to the state. It is actually a type of sculpture, which is practiced on sand. It can be compared with stone sculpture. pture. To carve a sand sculpture, the raw material is the only clean and fine grained sand mixed with water . With the help of this type of sand and with the blessings of God and by the magic of fingers , an artist can carve a beautiful and attractive sculpture on the beach.

Knut bear
Buddha Sculpture
Sculpture on Terrorism

AIDS Awareness

No War Campagin
History:
The lineage of this art dates back to a long time back. One can find the mention of this art in the life story of Balaram Das, one of the most well known poets of Orissa. This poet was a prominent literary figure of the 14th century AD. The sand art was, therefore, one of the prevalent art forms of 14th century Orissa. There is an interesting mythical story associated with sand art in Orissa. According to popular belief, Balaram das wanted to climb Lord Jagannath's chariot to pay homage to him, but he was not allowed to do so. He went to the sea beach and started carved the images of Lord Jagannath, Devi Subhadra and Lord Balabhadra out of sand. He then prayed to this image of Lord Jagannath. It is said that his dedication was so strong that the statues of the deities were later seen on the beach where Balaram Das offered his prayers and not on the chariot.

Global Warming Campaign
Lord Ganesha Sculpture
One of the famous artists of Orissa who is involved in this art form is Sudarsan Pattnaik. His works are mostly based on current world issues, ranging from climate change to world peace.


Lokpal Bill Issue
Help for Tsunami Victims

Appealing for the release of two Italian tourists, on a beach in Puri, Orissa

Famous Rajnikant
Time has changed, people have become more aware and respect this form of art. Whenever I visit Puri beach, I am always curious to know which sculpture will be depicted in seashore today. It’s always a treat for eyes to see such beautiful sand Sculpture.

5 comments:

  1. nicely potrayed... N presently sudarshan pattanik simply rocks with his sand-art... he has given a complete different exposure to this unique talent which is booming now a days like anything

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  2. Thanks Sridhar!!! Its always a pleasure to see Sudarshan's work on Puri Beach.

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  3. Respected Sirs, Kindly make a sand art for population control.
    Population explosion is causing harm to everybody because with the increase of population of a country, the available natural resources per person such as land, water, soil, minerals, oil, metals, chemicals, agriculture products per person decreases. Thus there are scarcities of all these items. The available resources remain constant, rather decreasing and the demand of each product increases due to population increase, therefore there is always huge gap between demand & supply which lead to price increase, scarcity of resource. The ultimate result is poverty. Poverty lead to many social problems such as theft, robbery, murder, suicide, child labor, torture, dowry system, unemployment, exploitation of labor force, blackmail, molestation, rape, power shortage, illiteracy. You name any social issue/problem, do the root cause analysis, we will find that the root cause is over population. All can these social problem be eliminated once the population of the country is under control, which is possible if everybody take responsibility to control the population of his/her family as well as others family.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Respected Sir, Kindly make a sand art for population control.
    Population explosion is causing harm to everybody because with the increase of population of a country, the available natural resources per person such as land, water, soil, minerals, oil, metals, chemicals, agriculture products per person decreases. Thus there are scarcities of all these items. The available resources remain constant, rather decreasing and the demand of each product increases due to population increase, therefore there is always huge gap between demand & supply which lead to price increase, scarcity of resource. The ultimate result is poverty. Poverty lead to many social problems such as theft, robbery, murder, suicide, child labor, torture, dowry system, unemployment, exploitation of labor force, blackmail, molestation, rape, power shortage, illiteracy. You name any social issue/problem, do the root cause analysis, we will find that the root cause is over population. All can these social problem be eliminated once the population of the country is under control, which is possible if everybody take responsibility to control the population of his/her family as well as others family.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Really good collection Ruchita...

    ReplyDelete