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From a sunlit studio in Vile Parle, Vithal Shanbag teaches people how to make their own Ganesh idols
He sets it on the table as an unshapely lump of wet clay. By the time he’s finished work on it, it has transformed into Ganesh, the elephant God.
Through wire-mesh windows, the late afternoon light filters into Vithal Shanbag’s small studio at Vile Parle. Pieces of sculpture wait in various stages of completion.
Ganesh Chathurthi is a few days away. Across the city, homes small and large are buying Ganesh idols off the shelf. But a small band of people has been converging on this studio, where Shanbag has been teaching them to make their own idols.
Jyotsna Pathare, a former student of his and now Principal of the L S Raheja School of Art, Bandra, says: ‘‘He makes Ganesh idols in a very traditional style, especially the way he colours them. The dye is not just sprayed on—it’s a long, manual process and we’d be at it for hours on end.’’
“I learnt how to make Ganeshas from my father,’’ says Shanbag, who retired as head of the Department of Sculpting and Modelling at the J J School of Art. An eye for art is something he feels he got from the environment at home.
‘‘My mother taught me how to look at shape and texture differently,” he says.
He talks about his parents, who came over from Padubidri, Karnataka to Pandharpur, Maharashtra, and then to Mumbai and found this place where the studio now stands. This is where Shanbag was born, and where he works and now lives with his family.
As he grew up, folk artists, painters and musicians frequented his house. They saw paintings made by the adolescent and suggested the J J School of Art, where he studied from 1954 to 1964. He completed formal training in both painting and sculpting before joining the college as professor.
His old students remember a man generous with his time. ‘‘He was very patient with us and it was an intense experience working at his studio,’’ says Pathare, of a place she remembers strewn with books and sculptures-in-the-making.
‘‘Artists can’t be disconnected from people, from society, of which art is an inseperable part,’’ Shanbag says. His students say his work stands testimony to his career as a professor spanning two decades and his continuing work as an artist involved in various projects across the country.
While you absorb the range of the pieces littered across his work area, he tells you about his aversion to public display of his work in the form of exhibitions. ‘‘Also, I don’t take formal classes, I don’t like to be tied down,’’ he says.
A half-finished idol, an amateur
effort, lies in serene wait. It will be installed in the house of its maker—possibly
the sculptor’s first attempt, but something very close to his heart, no
doubt.
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