My sweet home
In my home everything has a home.
In the living room hangs a demon mask from South India. A protector not an omen. Above it a National Geographic photograph of a young African Boy in his ceremonial headdress. Hand painted milagros above the French doors. A wall of Talavera crosses. Resin art depicting inner city communities. Opposing it paintings by Frederico Correa, one depicting a child bride attempting to escape the clutches of misogyny, the other a nude, up to the eye of the beholder to negotiate its story. Then there’s the gold wall. Oil landscapes of Virginia, Ed Fadool would be quite elderly now. Remembering talking about his life’s work every year at the arts festival. The oil painting of Joni Mitchell sitting with a glass of wine and a cigarette pondering life from both sides sits there too. Our floors covered in Turkish killims, few of them over 200 years old. On top my grandmother’s 100 year old teak chairs carefully restored.
In the bedroom hangs a 150 year old Thankha painted with one horse’s hair depicting the life of Sidhartha to Buddha. It was rolled up sitting in a tiny little shop in the Himalayas collecting dust. The shopkeeper and I didn’t need to speak the language to understand its significance. A didgeridoo etched with Aboriginal carvings sits close by. The artist sitting at a park in Alice Springs, Australia carefully etching each one when I met him. He took the time to share his stories of the lifelong racism he faced evident in the carvings. Art and alcohol his solace from the pain. An English map from the 1800’s of India sits close by with all the Colonial names that exist no more.
A series of Watercolor paintings from the Aurobindo ashram in Pondicherry sprinkle the walls. The artist a young man who had no home to go back to so the ashram his refuge. His family threw him out because he was gay.
Cow and elephant heads adorned with peacocks, lotuses, and Krishna playing his flute. Catrina dolls sprinkled around Hernandez earthenware. They have stories too. All made by women who pride themselves in building self sustaining businesses so their livelihood never beholden to anyone else.
I’ve been collecting art for 2 decades. I made a promise to myself a long time ago that I would only purchase original art and one day my forever home look like an art gallery. I didn’t always have the money when I was young so I would save. It took me a year to purchase the Frederico paintings. The gallery owner paid attention to my weekly visits to stare at them, kind enough to let me pay for it in installments. I was only 23 and I remember bringing them home. The art I choose to collect tells my own stories through time.
Each piece worthy of curiosity. I wonder which country the kilim rugs lay before my home. The teak chairs I sat in as a 6 year old while my grandmother sang to me shipped all the way from Calcutta to America, just like me. The lives of the women who made the handicrafts. Do they have children? Can the mothers keep them safe? What kind of patience it must take to paint with one horse’s hair? One day when my daughter is older, I’ll introduce her to my books. Toni Morrison being first.
If we are to call ourselves citizens of this world, then the responsibility to understand human suffering is tantamount. Compassion not a wild card in our back pockets to pick and choose the recipient.
Conformity is the death of creativity and the demise of humanity. Paintings, sculptures, songs, novels an entry point to the world and all its stories. All of it an invitation to think critically. To understand our connection to one another and expand our consciousness.