ALG-O-Rhythm… The Beginning! || ALG-O-Rhythm Magazine

ALG-O-Rhythm… The Beginning!

Writer- Sharmishtha Gupte-Shinde
Mobile: +91 99229 16639

Since a very young age, I was always attracted to art but was unable to realize this fact. The formal separations of career and hobby, curricular and extracurricular had a great impact on how I looked at art all these years. Recently, I attended a workshop on Indian art and after a long time, I started creating my own artworks. When I finished my first artwork, I felt satisfied to the core of my soul. Then I started working on a few more small and big artworks on my own. Spending long hours creating these artworks gave me immense pleasure. I started connecting with myself and it was a great achievement for me. During this process, I realized that I could reconnect with my true self by creating art.

For the last few years, I was so much involved in working for my survival, which you may call a career, that I was unable to find time for myself. If I recollect my memories, I can see myself always involved in art related activities during my teenage years. As a school going girl, I was known for making beautiful mehndi designs. By the time I joined college, I had become a Mehndi artist without any formal training. People in my circle appreciated and encouraged my art. Life moved on and I almost forgot who I was or what I liked the most. Over the years, art in one form or the other kept touching my life, with always enriching and satisfying experience. I experimented with terracotta jewellery, paper pulp jewellery, wall painting, fabric painting, and a few similar forms of art. And I must confess I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of it, not only the final product, but the entire journey from learning till creating.

Once I started creating art pieces, I felt a need to share my art with people who can appreciate or criticize it. I believe this sharing process enriches us as an artist, giving us a sense of achievement, fulfilment, and provide opportunities to improve. With these thoughts at the back of my mind, I started exploring social media platforms to connect with like-minded people. I tried to find groups of art lovers to get in touch with people who are interested in art. What I found was that there are groups of professional artists and there is no place for art lovers like me. I have never identified myself as a commercial or professional artist, hence there was a natural inhibition in joining artists’ communities, although online. I was simply looking for groups of people who appreciate art and are not necessarily artists. The search continued for some time, without bearing any fruits.

I believe that there is art in everything around us and that is precisely what makes our lives beautiful. All of us are artists in some sense as we are always creating something. And trying to make that something more beautiful than before. All day-to-day activities like writing, speaking, cooking have some form of art in them. I wanted to meet with people who could understand and appreciate art in all of its forms. People who are creating art for themselves or simply interested in art as a part of their lives.

When you do not find something that you are looking for, you either give up on the search or try to create it on your own. I took the later path and decided to start a group of people I was looking for. A group of art lovers - Art Lovers’ Group - ALG. And that is the story of the birth of ALG-O-Rhythm. This is an effort to find the rhythm in the lives of people who loves art, appreciates art, creates art, encourages art, or even live art! I started sharing this concept with people in my circle. Some of them found it interesting and we started meeting to discuss and plan around art.

The very first activity taken up by ALG-O-Rhythm as a group was the beautification of a children’s home in the heart of the Pune city. An NGO running a hostel for children of sex workers from the infamous red-light area of Pune was looking for volunteers to colour up the walls of an old school building they had converted into a children’s home. The idea was exciting enough and ALG-O-Rhythm group members, though not all of them are artists as such, took it up as an opportunity to challenge their own inhibitions and limitations. We visited the place and had multiple brainstorming sessions to decide what should go on the walls of a children’s home. Something that would make the children happy and interested to stay there. Something that would make them feel at home, at the same time fuel their fantasies and imagination.

The school building was empty as all the children were sent back to their homes following Covid guidelines by the government. Based on the skillsets available in the group and considering the usage of each room and passage, we finalised the drawings and prepared a plan for the next couple of weeks. An appeal for volunteers was circulated on social media and in personal contacts. We got a good response to the appeal. Many people contacted us and expressed their willingness to contribute. Some of them were deterred by the location - the infamous red-light area, but few others took it as a challenge and opportunity to work in a different kind of project.

The entire school building was recently painted with white oil paint, thus limiting our options of using different paint materials. Most of the artists in the group were comfortable working in acrylic or plastic emulsion (water based) colours, however, we had no other option than using oil paint for colouring up our drawings on the walls. It was more challenging because the group members were not experienced and comfortable in oil paint media. We checked the utility of the place and decided to paint the passage areas with oil paint as the staff informed us that these walls would need frequent washing to keep them clean. The themes were selected based on the purpose of the space and artistic concepts that would appeal to children in the age group of 6 to 14 years.

The second wave of Covid-19 hit when we had barely started our work. It became more difficult to get volunteers to work under such circumstances. We started working in small groups, following all safety protocols for Covid-19. The entry passage was taken up first, followed by the rest rooms for girls and boys, changing room, computer room, library, facade of the school, etc. Our group consisting of drawing teachers, commercial artists, photographers, doodling artists, students, professionals, and art lovers coloured up the entrance, the library walls and some parts of the computer room within one month’s duration. All the volunteers spared long hours from their busy schedules for these wall painting activities. The work was tiring but at the same time inspiring for all of us, filling us with the positive energy and gratification of creating our own artworks.

Due to the government restrictions on movement and work, the wall painting activity had to be paused abruptly. The changing scenario also affected the regular meetups of ALG-O-Rhythm group and we switched to online meetings instead of in-person interactions. The school walls are waiting for us to resume the work and all the group members are also eager to continue their amazing work with lots of positive energy. In the meanwhile, we have come up with this magazine to promote arts and artists. Many more projects and activities are in the pipeline. We are waiting for the restrictions to be lifted and hoping to see life returning to normalcy soon.

If this piece of information made you curious and interested about ALG-O-Rhythm, if you could relate to any of the experiences shared above, if you are also looking for a group of art lovers to discuss and enjoy various art forms, you are most welcome to join us. Do connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. We would love to see you in the next weekly meetup of ALG-O-Rhythm!