City artist turns terrace into canvas

There are various ways in which one could voice his/her opinion. B. Gowtham, a youngster from the city, chose art as his medium. An engineering graduate, he decided to take up art as his full-time career. His recent work, Listen to the plate — The leftover massacre, was shared widely on social media because of the strong message the work carries. Unlike other artists, who prefer public spaces to display his/her art, Gowtham creates art at the terrace of his house.

“Art has a great potential to spread awareness and that’s the reason why I create art with everyday materials. Listen to the plate is my dream project and I’ve been working on it for a couple of months. I’ve made an image of a skeleton with 25 kg of food waste (only rice varieties) and 35 kg of raw rice packets. People don’t realise the amount of food that they are wasting on a daily basis. And it’s really sad to see the ‘don’t care attitude’ of some people. It has become a common habit to waste food and it needs to be changed,” he says.

The artist collected the food waste from shops near his residence. “I went to a number of food shops near my house to collect the food waste. I packed it in covers and created an illustration of a skeleton. Once the work was done, I segregated the raw rice and distributed it to underprivileged people,” he adds.

The artist started creating illustrations as a hobby but later understood that art is an effective medium. Another work that caught netizens attention is the skeleton of a fish made of plastic straws. “The project is called Straw wars — Conquering oceans. I collected straws of various colours from juice shops and juice carts. Many have this habit of throwing garbage into rivers and seas. Straw is one plastic waste that sinks to the ocean floor and acts as a threat to marine life. The response to this illustration was great. Even, two days ago, a friend of mine send a thank you note stating that the company he works has decided to ban plastic straws and stirrers and use eco-friendly alternatives,” shares Gowtham.

His other projects include ‘Stop the drop: Scam of negligence’ and 12 per cent GST on sanitary pads (later, the government scrapped the tax on sanitary pads after protest) “I was so happy when sanitary napkins were out of GST net. The council should think from people’s side and should fix the rates accordingly to the welfare of the people. If the development of the country is concerned by the 12% of a women’s bleeding, then we don’t need such kind of development,” he says in an angry tone.

We asked him the reason for not choosing a public platform to create illustrations that convey a message and he says, “I am using social media to spread the message and am happy with the venue I’ve chosen. In the future, I might take illustration to public spots.”

Another work that’s closeto Gowtham is the 3D wall art portraying a library in a city school. “I’ve used over 35 shades of colours to paint the abstract 3D library,” he sums up.The artist also does commercialwall art projects for individuals and companies.