Bike to School

Myself and my brother Atul used to bike to school together. This is the time when we were at Indore, India. We had a dog named Jenny. Every morning when we would start to go to school, she would break her chain and run after us. So we would have to come back home again and ask our mom to hold her so she wouldn't run after us.
This sculpture was very difficult and challenging. I had to make 2 bikes, 2 figures and try to balance them as well. The bike kept falling apart while I was making it in wax. The base plate is aluminum and the bikes and the dog are bolted to the base.

Sisters 2

As I continued my sculpture making, I became more comfortable with the tools that I was using. Still it is a complex procedure.
There was only one year, when both me and my sister were in the same school together. I was in 5th and Tai (my sister) was in 10th. She was tall and I was short. She did everything fast and I was slow. We had to catch a bus to go to school. She would hold my hand and we would go together to the bus stop.
Both the figures were done separately. The base is a limestone tile from home depot.

Making Bread "Bhakri"

In my fourth semester, I decided to make a woman making bread, called bhakri. This is made out of sorghum flour and is done by hand. It is a village setting, where bhakri is the staple diet there. The stove is small with coal and wood. To make it even more authentic, I prepared a base with mud, clay and hay. As a backup, I also made a base with bronze.

Sisters

My daughters used to play a game called "Phugdi", where you hold hands and go round and round. I also grew up playing this game with my friends and sister. The girls were done separately. The base was done by coating wax on styrofoam to give a nice texture. The girls were then welded to the base.

Bullock cart with the driver

Now that the bullock cart had bullocks, a driver was needed. So I did the driver to complete my bullock cart. I dedicated this sculpture to my dad, who embraced village life after retirement.

Bullock Cart continued

I took the class again second semester. I still had to make bullocks for the cart. My father suggested that you should do bullocks as well. Bullocks were not easy to make. I also ended up making solid bullocks. So they are really heavy. Also this semester was a trying time emotionally. My father was undergoing dialysis and he was not doing very well. In April he was really sick. I did show him the completed bullocks in wax. But he never got to see them in metal. In between my class I visited him in India during his last days. Somehow I managed to complete the bullocks in time by the end of the semester. The cart is in memory of my father whom I called "Baba".

Cart

I decided to try something different and so I took a Sculpture class. I had no idea what kind of sculpture I was going to do. As the semester went by, I was totally amazed by the makings of a bronze sculpture. Under the guidance of my teacher Dave Ogle and Yori Seeger, I managed to complete my first sculpture in bronze using the lost wax method. First I made the sculpture in wax and then I coated it with layers of sand slurry. Once the coatings were completely dry, I then melted the wax inside. After that melted bronze was poured into the mold. Then I broke the mold with a hammer and painstakingly removed every sand particle. To clean it further, I used the sand blaster. After that using variety of tools, I further refined the cart. Lastly, patina was applied. This was also the first time that I had used variety of tools.
The cart itself was a representation of the village that I visited many often. On one side of the cart and the top, there are cotton leaves and flowers. On the other side of the cart is the front door of the house. The top and the wheels were done separately and then welded together.