About Me

I am an architect and sustainable design consultant by training. But I am also gravitating towards art these days – although, it would be more accurate to say that I have spent most of my adult life, gravitating away from art.

From the time that I could put pencil to paper, I spent much of my afternoons filling up any piece of paper that I could find with drawings. At the ripe young age of five, the year of the Montreal Olympics, those drawings were mostly of Nadia Comaneci. I was quite taken in by her. By my teen years, I was taken in by the Beatles and Van Gogh, and my afternoon ritual had turned into quite an obsession – But, I also loved science, wanted to “save the environment”, and have a regular paycheck. So I got a degree in Architecture in 1994, and another in Sustainable Building Design in 1999. I was perfectly equipped to balance creativity, save the environment, and have a regular paycheck. Or, so I thought.

By January of 2007, I had reduced a ton of greenhouse gases, and, improved daylight and air quality for thousands of workers and children – all from within a cube farm environment, and quite far away from the very environment that I was trying to protect. I had also gone up one dress size!

It was a moment of crisis. In the many years of existential conflict, between my passion for the arts, and saving the environment – (and paying bills!) – I have bounced around getting degrees, including a part-time enrolment in a Peace and Conflict Studies program (to understand the environmental roots of political conflicts). I wrote a lengthy paper on the same. But a full-time career in the arts, still seemed too much like self-indulgence … an indulgence for me to avoid till a well-earned retirement?

But retirement is far away, and the arts keep stubbornly at my heels. So, at nearly forty, I have finally decided to return to what I enjoy doing immensely – draw.

I try to placate my persistent conflict between doing social good, and working towards a career in the arts, by litanizing that the arts and social contribution don’t have to be mutually exclusive after all. Naïve as it may sound!!!

The arts can sear the inner recesses of our soul as nothing – except perhaps falling in love – can. It can rattle our conscience into unexpected awakenings, and push us into spaces that we would rather not see. It can provoke original thought, and call to question our perception of the world. Yes, there have been moments in history, when art has changed the world.

At least, that’s what I think it can do. At least, that’s what I hope I can do – if I can steady my unreliable reserves of patience, conviction and fortitude. As for making a living with art, I hope that will come, too! And, if I ever revert to my “original” dress size, I will simultaneously revert to eating mousse au chocolat every week! Mmm… mmm… mmm…

As of now, I enjoy my life by the California coast. I am constantly inspired by its wild blue skies and amorous clouds, its stony grey beaches and rich tide pools, its thunderous waves and wind swept trees. Savage grasses and crunchy leaves, wild flowers and anemones, sea urchins and the giant kelp – they all inspire me, but none inspire me as much as the epic whale migration off the Pacific coast.

Thank you for visiting. I hope that you will stay a while, peruse around, and leave your comments.

-Aditi

Oakland, CA. 2010.