Annaliese Calhoun is a graduate student at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St Louis. Over the summer she is working part-time at the Pulitzer Foundation as an MSW practicum student.  Currently, her coursework has brought her to India where she is living in the rural village of Kalleda, immersing herself in the culture. For 5 weeks she is studying, among other things, the role of art in community empowerment. 

July 2009

I force myself to get up before 6am today. Though I have already missed the sunrise, I am determined to watch the village women go about their morning ritual of decorating their doorsteps with muggulu and malakala. I hurriedly dress and cross the yard of the school’s compound where I am staying. Out through the red gate and straight up the dirt road through town, I can see that for these Indian villagers, morning is already well under way. I smile at the men and children who brush their teeth with neen and clear their throats loudly.

I am just in time. Outside of one home, an ancient matriarch prepares the ground with a mixture of ox dung and clay; despite her age she leans over easily from the hips. Outside of other homes and businesses mothers or teenage girls complete the same ritual.  Next, an assortment of colored powders is fetched from within the house and the true mystery begins. Some women begin with a grid of small white dots, others simply launch into a full fledged design. Pinching white rice powder between thumb and forefinger they spread it so smoothly it is as if a paintbrush extended from their fingertips.  White arcs and symmetrical curves appear and quickly give life to detailed patterns.  Lastly, fingertips are tipped in small tins of red or vermillion to add highlights at the center of flowers or stars.

I walk up and down the street. No design is the same. By 10:30 in the morning many of these muggulu and malakala will be blurred and trampled by heavy traffic, others will still shine brightly and clearly against the dirt. Tomorrow, the women will wash away the remaining traces of their creative work and begin afresh.

***

Another morning, my professor and I walk through town and venture down a side lane.  We come upon an old weathered woman who beckons us forward to where her husband sits weaving a grain sieve from strong dried grasses.  His only garment is a battered lungi, wrapped around his skinny legs and waist.  He grasps the slowly forming basket with his feet.  The woman ducks into her home and returns with a pale lavender button down shirt, which she drops in her husband’s lap.  He waves it away while we try to communicate that we don’t mind his lack of formality.

The woman then squats beside her husband on their little covered porch. She picks up an unfinished flat triangle of woven reeds and begins again.  Deftly she criss-crosses the strands, cutting edges with a knife, inserting new pieces as she goes along, row upon row.  There is a fluid language to her movements I cannot decipher. How does she determine when to cut a reed and when to insert a fresh piece?  When she finishes weaving the bed of the sieve she flips it over, revealing a perfect pattern of a square within ever larger squares.  She tosses this rectangular piece to her husband, who then further molds the reeds and weaves on a strong rim.  He uses both his forehead and a mallet to achieve the desired shape. In the space of 20 minutes we watch this couple create beauty and function out of dried grasses.

***

Late that afternoon, I play cards on the tiled porch of the guest house with other students from Washington University.  We are in the midst of a hand of Rummy when a contingent of girls from the Junior College (grades 11-12) walk over holding tubes that look like they are made for icing a cake.  And so the card game is put on hold, while we all take turns receiving henna.  I am assigned to Anusha, a girl with a wide face and two straight black braids. She cradles my palm and squeezing the tube, skillfully lays out tiny dark brown curls and loops.  It tickles slightly.  I am amazed by the sureness of her movements and the detail of the flowering swirls that trace up my palm and cover my index finger. After it dries like caked mud, I wash off the thick lines of henna. An even more intricate pattern remains, dyed dark orange across my hand.

***

And I get to thinking about art. These mediums of powder, grass, and henna that carry with them the impermanence of earth and life. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  Yet for the space of a day, a week, or many years these designs and objects bring beauty into everyday living.  The women do not believe their creative energy misspent if a team of oxen tramples their design, tomorrow they will prepare the ground again and lay out swirls and loops in careful proportion. The old couple will continue lacing fingers through reeds, never guessing that my professor will display their sieve proudly on his wall, telling friends, ‘Look, can you see that pattern?’ The girls will always delight in covering our palms and fingers in elaborate henna, knowing that it will fade. The temporary and ordinary, yet imbued with beauty and an artist’s eye.

I think about my time spent at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, where 300 year old paintings are kept under precision temperatures.  The pieces are hung precisely on walls, protected from sunlight and guarded from close encounters with people by Gallery Assistants.  “Please stay 3 feet away, for your own safety and that of the artwork.” We say these pieces are valuable.  They are by ‘Old Masters.”  The visitors come, look, and wonder at its meaning, its relevance to their life.  Footsteps echo against smooth concrete.  Will these paintings stick in their memory when they leave?  Does seeing the pained expression of Mary Magdalene or St. Sebastian pierced by arrows leave them enriched, more in touch with the beauty of the world?

These two forms of art, existing literally worlds apart.  One fleeting and temporal, reminding us of beauty’s fragility, of its quick passing.  The other solid; these paintings will outlast us; new scholars will plumb their depths and position them carefully in galleries.  And I wonder- who defines what art is?  Who decides what is valuable?