To paint the Chand Baori stepwell of Jaipur in the traditional miniature style cannot be an easy thing to do. For Jaipur-based painter Rajnish Nimbark, to paint it upside down onto a semi-vaulted ceiling, was downright Escherian in complexity. “Even the trees were upside down,” he exclaims. Nimbark was tasked with bringing alive the walls and ceilings of the recently-opened Museum of Meenakari Heritage with frescoes depicting scenes of Indian festivals such as Diwali, Holi and patangbaazi (kite-fighting). “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, but I had never done that before.”
Over 1,800 km away, in Bhubaneshwar, Krushi Bhawan, the five-year-old office building for the state department of agriculture (and a pet project of chief minister Naveen Patnaik), boasts an equally distinct visual identity. One hundred artisans from Orissa wove farmland folklore and mythology into dhokra-style light fixtures, pattachitra-style carvings on laterite walls, and a brick facade inspired by ikat textile patterns. “We did not know we could do anything different,” says Sesha, one of the craftspeople in a promotional video. “Earlier, we did carvings for temples. It was only after this project that we realised our skills could be applied in other architectural projects.”
