Today we’d like to introduce you to Anjali Srinivasan.
Anjali, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I am not sure when I started being an artist: when I collected and categorized colored newsprint from newspaper supplements only to use in collages and classroom posters? When I made crepe paper flowers for the lady begging at the street corner to sell and earn an income? When I built and destroyed, miniature sculptures by clumping spices in my grandmother’s kitchen?… did my mind always know to transform material and situation? And did my hands always know how to make something of it?
After graduating from a design college in India, I worked with traditional craftspeople on design development projects. We would generate new designs, tools and methods that could invigorate a craft tradition, improve livelihood and restore their sense of pride in being living representatives of centuries of indigenous knowledge.
During one such project, I encountered hot glass held within a furnace, fell in love with the medium (or perhaps my inability to communicate with it easily) and have spent my life since then getting to know it better.
Since there were no suitable educational programs in the home country, I came to the USA to study glass. I apprenticed in sweden, worked at the metropolitan museum of glass, assisted the immensely talented, generous and wise artist Ann Hamilton, returned to india to set up my studio, explored the arena of art fairs, residencies, gallery exhibitions and commissions, relocated to Dubai (UAE) and started the region’s only handcrafted, artist-run, hot glass studio. All the while, leaning increasingly towards education.
And then, two years ago, I felt ready to commit to teaching in my field. full-time. And I was fortunate that I found a great fit for my interests and values in the Massachusetts college of art and design, who gave me my new home in Boston last year. so, here I am!!!
Has it been a smooth road?
Every road has potholes, deep cracks, patches of gravel, a car thats parked poorly, snow that has piled up, people walking… so, easy or difficult is not a gauge I understand experience with. Instead, may we flip the question? Has the road been worth traveling on?
YES, yes, yes.
I have had incredible adventures – and detours – along this road : starting a glass studio in a foreign country in the middle east from scratch, working in a few different parts of the world, living better with depression, learning real skills, facing unemployment, disappointment and heartbreak, appreciating that habits are flexible based on context and culture, experiencing racism and gender bias, attempting to maintain a trans-continental artistic practice, and at the core, working to find a deep understanding of the important place of my hands in my being and thinking.
The advice I can offer is what has held me in good stead: keep going. pace yourself, and keep going. the laws of the universe are such that you will go somewhere.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
I am an artist who creates using spices, hot glass and emergent technologies. i am invested in the eroding the notion of a self-contained object. I make toys, tools, devices and installations that mutate with time or participation, and are fulfilled by implicating the “viewer” within their framework.
Recent best-known efforts include:
* the reflective, wearable glass dress i wore first in 2010;
* a responsive crystal surface that debuted as swarovski’s designer of the future project at design miami/basel in switzerland in 2017;
* crowd-created glass sculpture in public space;
* directing the middle-east’s only up-cycled glass design studio.
We’re interested to hear your thoughts on female leadership – in particular, what do you feel are the biggest barriers or obstacles?
In terms of potential, women are well-positioned to do anything, especially matters that bring unspoken, overlooked, seemingly distant and divergent areas of thought. We have the strengths of both deep inquisition as well as lateral learning that the world is enriched by. Yet, in the guise of humility, we are often taught to be apologetic about our desire/ability to lead.
In terms of opportunity, we should know that there are organizations that foster equity and help us advance our interests. For example, the american association of university women made it possible for me to go to graduate school, and to return to my home country in order to train other women in glass craft so that they could earn incomes through a cottage-based creative activity. I want to give them a shout-out for their support of women’s dreams.
Contact Info:
- Address: Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Fine Arts 3D department
621 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115 - Website: www.anjalisrinivasan.com / www.chochoma.com
- Email: anjali_vasan@yahoo.com
- Instagram: chochomastudios
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anjali.srinivasan.77
- Twitter: chochomastudios
Image Credit:
abu dhabi music and arts foundation, mark cocksedge, alana quinn, mary ann wincorkowski
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