This year SAISA Art and Music 2020 was combined and was combined hosted by the American School of Bombay (Mumbai), the schools that were in SAISA Art and Music were, OSC, ASB, AISC, AISD, LS, and TAISM. In SAISA Art you are put into different groups, media groups, I signed up for the paper art which was the smallest media group out of mixed media, acrylic, and photography. The reason why I had decided to choose paper art over the other media was that I had made a goal for this year’s visual arts experience. That goal was to try a different media I have either never tried or learned properly, as I wanted to prepare myself for DP 2 visual arts as we would be making a lot of pieces I want to get myself familiar with as many media. The paper arts group was led and taught by Sachin Tekade, who is a well-known Indian artist with experience of using paper.

Day 1-

The goal for the first day was to get some inspiration for our art pieces we would do, so we started the day off by going out of the ASB campus and exploring around Mumbai. We would do this by having a tour of multiple Mumbai galleries, like TARQ, Chemoud Gallery, Jhaveri Contemporary, and others. During each tour of the galleries, we would take notes of the artist’s style and what they did in order to create that piece, or even do our own sketches of the pieces as some did not allow photos to be taken.

Paper Art Group (Ms.Ali)

Day 2-

The second day was when we were introduced to our workshop leaders and an introduction to the paper arts with Sachin Tekade giving us a simple but technical demonstration on how to create a basic piece. Sachin Tekade had shown us how we could use the exact knives and make a piece of paper go from a 2D to 3D piece without anything holding it up and how we could use the shadows as part of the whole piece. While others had been already having thought of ideas for their first piece, I would draw sketches and practice to see if that drawing could be created. It took a while but I was able to create a piece. During my thought process for the first piece I had thought of creating a theme that I would follow, as we traveled through the city on the first day I would notice the color of the sky as we went over the Bandra-Worli Sea Link and how yellow it was. So, my first piece, “The Lone Tree”, was a piece where I had placed a paper tree being surrounded by other pieces that would look like a roof with a chimney, buildings, factories, and a frame. The frame was added to show how sooner or later we will only be able to view our clean environment through photos in the past. I started sketching and making mind maps for my second piece I would want to display on the 3rd day, following the same theme as the first piece.

First Piece

Day 3-

The final day was focused on the exhibition for all the art pieces from all every single media workshops. Because the second day I had still been sketching and creating ideas, and not started the creating process. The few hours given to us for studio work in the morning were mainly focused on being able to sketch my piece and give the laser printer time to be able to cut out my whole piece on an A3 paper and wooden board. The second art piece I was creating was a heart with the parts of the heart being modified to look like sewerage, factories, gas masks, and a part where there are stitches to show the effect. The laser cutting process luckily had finished a few minutes before the exhibition had finished so I was able to set up without any pressure, then we, the Visual Arts group, had to go to the multi-purpose gym to watch the final SAISA music performance. After the performance, the Visual Arts group had to give a small display for everyone before we had to immediately go to the airport.

Second Piece

Paper Art Media Exhibition (Ms. Ali)

Paper Art Media Exhibition (Ms. Ali)

Reflection-

This trip as an overall was a very important trip as having chosen visual arts as one of my higher-level subjects, it had taught me different things that could help me as an artist and a person. As an artist, I realized how technology is so advanced nowadays that it really can speed up the creation process and it gives us so much more leisure time to design the best next piece. Through that designing phase, I had learned a lot about my weaknesses and how I could develop them into strength, like decision making. I previously had issues on being able to decide on which sketch or plan to follow and I would then also start being negative on the piece I had decided and started making it way too complicated. However, being able to get taught and assisted by an artist with so much experience I was able to learn to be more confident in myself and more organized when sketching and planning.