Creating masterpieces with discarded stones

For most of us stones lying by the road side appears like an eyesore and an unwanted distraction, but for this 31-year-old artist it appears like resourceful objects for his artwork. Making use of these odd shaped stones lying by the roadside, he creates wonderful pieces of art.

AR Manjunath is the artiste who creates sculptures out of stones collected from footpaths and road side curbs. He has created a unique collection of around 35 sculptures, all chiselled and carved and out of pieces of granite, discarded on the roadside.

Manjunath who has done MFA in Scultpure and BFA in Painting, both from the Chamarajendra Academy of Visual Arts (CAVA) Mysore, has exhibited his artworks several times at Chitrakala Parishat, Bangalore and also at National Sculpture camp
2010 held at Kannada University, Hampi. He has bagged this year's Karnataka Shilpakala Academy State Award, which will be presented to him on May 31 at Ravindra Kalakshetra.

Hailing from Bilikere, Manjunath while commuting daily to Mysore for his studies began collecting various types of stones, especially the granite stones that were chipped off while making stone slabs for construction works. Working on the collection, he began creating his artworks.

Speaking to Express, he said that `There are many stones of varying hues and shapes occurring naturally and I have made use of such multi-colour, especially two colour stones, for most of my artworks.'

'The stones available in the market are quite expensive and I not go in search of stone blocks for my artworks, instead I make use of only those which are available in nature in plenty. I practiced carving on stones lying on roadside and those used for building constructions.'

`I want to continue with my sculpting and carving and eventually open a full-fledged art studio to train artists in making sculptures,' says Manjunath who conducts Art classes for children during summer vacation by teaching them about clay modeling, painting and drawing.

While inviting more number of students to come forward and enroll for such sculpture courses, he adds, `Most youngsters of today don't like this, because creating a single sculpture requires patience, hard work and lot of time.'