I always admire
people who have made their passion into a successful career. 47 years old
Sumitha Sundaram, a self made artist/painter is one such person. A spinster, she has dedicated her life to promoting art among
school children with a passion which is rare to find. Sumitha studied in Sishya
School in Chennai. Her mother remembers that right from the age of six she was
more interested in playing with coloring books and crayons than participating in outdoor activities. Her
parents did the right thing by enrolling her in a local drawing class when she
was 7, where she moved from crayons to oil paintings.
Right from her
school days she always dreamt of a
career in Art/Paintings. It was but natural that she graduated in History of
Fine Arts & Paintings from Stella Mary`s College in 1993 with distinction.
After brief stints with two advertising agencies she decided to turn
entrepreneur by starting her own agency ZED advertising. She was only 22. Her
clients included India Cements, Parrys, TI cycles, LIC, to name a few. But
since Painting had been her first love she decided to do something about it.
Seeing a huge potential among school children, she started Aavishkaar India
along with her mentor Vijay kulkarni to promote art/painting among children.
`The first
effort of Aavishkaar India was a summer
camp for a month held at Sathya Studio
premises in Chennai. It was a huge success. ‘Since then we have been conducting regular painting and
essay competitions for school children all over Chennai.` says Sumitha.
`At the end of the month long camp many
parents came and told me that instead of a month long programme where they had
to spend a lot of time escorting the children to the venue and back why can`t
we think of short duration residential camps. This triggered the idea of outstation
camps later.`
The next big project
was the big painting Mela she organized
on 7th January,2000 at the Marina Beach in which over 500 children,
aged 5-15 participated. It was again a huge success.
In the same year, in April, she took a group
of school children on wild life camps to forests in South India to promote awareness and
conservation of India’s rich natural heritage, resources and environment. These camps cover nature appreciation, soft adventure sports
and experiential learning. The first two camps were conducted in a
joint effort with WWF, World Wide Fund for Nature. 200 children joined in the 4
first ever nature camps in April /May 2000.
`Managing a
group of children in the age group 9 to 15 is a big responsibility. There
were several instances of children
falling ill or late arrival of children to catch trains forcing us to pull the
chains etc. Inspite of all the logistics problems I am glad to say that Aavishkar
India has been successfully running this project every year for the last
19years in which over 10,000 children have participated. These camps play a
very important role in developing the all round personality of a child and
helps him/her face challenges in their adult lives`
Next milestone
was in 2005 when she launched CHILDREN
NEWS BANK (CNB), an idea mooted by Vijay Kulkarni, her mentor and her partner
in business. It was a specially curated monthly newspaper for school
children. This project held between 2005 -12
covered not only schools in chennai but also many other cities totaling 120
schools in Tamil Nadu . At
its peak, CNB had a circulation of
22,000 copies per month. However,
because of a similar initiative undertaken by a leading Newspaper in
Tamilnadu, CNB was discontinued.
Since 2014
Team Aavishkaar is organizing `Art detours`, Painting Holidays to
promote painting and sketching outdoors amongst adults aged 20 to 75 years.
encouraging novices, hobbyists, amateur artists to experience and enjoy the
process of going outdoors into rural India to paint/sketch. Five such annual
painting holidays have been organised till date, and more are in the offing.
AAVISHKAAR WORK SPACE, a rented premises hired by
Sumitha in 2017 opened its doors to provide indoor space to young professionals
to explore their entrepreneurial skills. They earn by sharing their technical
/vocational knowledge with other people by conducting their workshops and training programs in the
Work Space. Curated art workshops also happen regularly in this space.
Sumitha`s latest business initiative is the MINI
Travel Easel for Artists she has designed and produced.
` I felt the
acute need for such portable Easels during my many trips out doors with adults.
MINI is a custom designed and fabricated
easel kit, that helps artists paint outdoors effortlessly, while enjoying the process.. The MINI Easel is made in
Chennai and shipped worldwide. Launched
last year, I have already sold about 150 kits till Nov.2019 to artists in far flung cities
like Rio de Janerio, Sao Paulo, Vietnam, countries like Turkey, Austria, Spain,
Emirates, Netherlands. I am also in the process of designing few more useful
art tools` says Sumitha.
With all the
activities she is involved in does she get time to pursue her own talent for
painting?
` In organising
the camps I do get the help of a few volunteers. Vijay Kulkarni,who works out of Hyderabad is a
great help in supporting me with the logistics of organizing camps. I do paint as often as time permits amidst camps and
workshops. Realizing that teaching art would play a direct role in improving my
talents, I have also started to teach art to worthy students. Portrait
Painting/sketching, particularly of children
has been my favorite subject from
early childhood. I continue to do that delighting my friends and others who
come to me with such requests`.
Sumitha
has dreams of taking the AAvishkaar idea to other cities. For a person who
lives and breathes ART it should not be difficult to realise her dreams!
The
Tamil translation of this article has appeared in the March,2020 issue of Ladies
Special, a Tamil monthly devoted to women.
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