Roma Mehta, David Pipkin – VDX
Roma Mehta
I grew up in Calcutta, a densely populated city where the entire spectrum of human experience was in plain sight everywhere you looked. From a very early age i found joy in art and painted every chance i got. It was a way to connect with my inner self and provided an escape from the sadness and misery around me. I could not fix what i saw, but i could create something beautiful.
I decided to study graphic design in college so that i could ensure a living while continuing to paint in my free time. Art and design merged as the years went by and became a way of seeing and understanding the world around me.
My art is a collection of episodes that afford glimpses into moments of clarity and have been essential in my journey.
Portraits, lines and shapes, energy, colours, all blend and become the lens through which I see the world. Art gives me the insights I need to understanding the world I have chosen to live in. India remains the vibrant inspiration, the chaos of my soul and my palette. It disturbs my senses and calls me to become involved. Taiwan brings order to the chaos of things beyond my control. Helps me linger longer in the creative space.
with the first brush stroke
the canvas becomes the master
and leads me through a spirit journey.
i remain receptive as thoughts unscramble and a story unfolds on a living canvas.
inspired by the energy of india,
the spirit of taiwan,
the beauty of our planet,
the embrace of its people.
Artist Bio:
Roma Mehta is originally from India. A graphic designer, an artist, and a committed community member, she has made Taiwan her home since 1987.
Visual Dialogues III, December 2015
It was a Sunday, slightly rainy and drizzly but nothing too out of character for Taipei. Walking through the Taiwan Air Force base to the Red Room always filled me with a sense of electricity. I hope I’m not late and I can’t wait to get there.
Making my way up the stone stairs surrounded by the white walls, I see photos. I would stop and admire them but I’m being dragged inside by my need to see the space and what’s been done to it this month.
I open the door and am met with an energy that is new. There are photos that capture times that I have not yet experienced and places foreign to me. Arranged in a manner that are at once calculated yet relaxed. Marveling at the subject matter and some of the artistic style of the photographer I wander into the main part of the room when I see them.
The umbrellas, not strewn across the floor or laid in a nice pile by the entrance, but hung as if though they were red lanterns at a night market in Taipei. All with different designs and markings. They were the production of another artist. Both artists had come together to use the space to present their creativity and I was brought to smiles when I saw what they had done.
The space had an energy that was interjected by the art chosen by these two creative beings. A beautiful photo of the Taipei cityscape hung in the corner surrounded by photos just as entrancing. Renderings of the artist perspective of Taipei turned into quirky comic books sat as a welcome to guests of this event.
Voices hummed and people were nibbling on some food provided by Sababa. But everything quieted down as the artist took their place in the front of the room to talk about their process. Both Alex and Bara had complimentary vibrations. They smiled and joked about their process but you could see that they took their craft seriously. Yet in the space you could see that the ego was not such a big part of the process.
Sharing and letting the world experience what you have seen or your perspective seemed to be the ultimate goal for this visual dialogue. Two artists, one that realized the beauty in the world with his camera and the other that created her own with a paints, pens and tools… Couldn’t think of a better way to spend a Sunday.
Daniel Black
David Pipkin
Born and raised in Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plains, and….never a day is without red clay. I took my first ceramics class in Stillwater Oklahoma, the home of the OSU Aggies, while I was studying architecture and dodging Draft bullets. I was immediately hooked on the process of making pots; digging that often overlooked amazing red clay, processing it, my fingers learning to see and understand the differential pressures needed to mold and form objects, then comes the chemistry of the glazes, and finally the magic of smoke and fire. All aspects of making clay objects have always fit me like a glove.
After graduation I spent more time making pots or playing on sailboats, than working as an architect. Downturns in real estate always hit architects first, so when a downturn hit Oklahoma I was actually delighted to be laid off so I could focus on playing with clay. After spending the better part of a year being a fulltime potter, I to returned to architecture with an interesting job. Although making a living from pots is possible and the hard work was actually fun, I found I really did not like working alone and was happy to hang around the water fountain again. During the first 5 years out of school I had many exhibitions, won awards, and made the rounds of multiple craft fairs.
Fast forward 40 years, I have not regretted remaining in architecture as it has shown me the world. I have worked in Oklahoma, NY, LA then Taipei. I was always able to keep my hands in clay and look forward to spending more time with clay as I get older.
I consider myself a serious student of clay. Every place I have lived in has offered different types of clay with different work conditions. In Taiwan I was limited to electric kilns, which was not my first choice but I gradually learned to come to terms with it. Two years ago I decided I wanted to go back to gas-fired kilns and thanks to the help of a potter friend Jack Doherty, I managed to build a gas-fired ‘soda’ kiln on my roof. After 12 months of planning I built a 1 cubic meter beast of a kiln. I had built and fired many high temperature gas kilns but never a soda kiln.
Soda firing means taking the kiln up to a temperature of about 1200 C, then introducing bicarbonate of soda in liquid form, which interacts with the clay and slips in unexpected ways. The process is 10 times more difficult to control than normal gas firing. After my 5th firing, I now have a pretty good list of things not to do. Hopefully, after 5 more firings I will have a reasonable list of things to do. Firing a cubic meter soda kiln offers a physical challenge that I did not plan for. However it is all part of the learning process, and I expect to make pots until the day I die, if it doesn’t kill me first.
