Amritsar artist Smiley Chowdhary creates art from waste

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, April 14

Creating a series of paintings and murals made from all kinds of waste material, based on the theme of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, artist Smiley Chowdhary and her team has dedicated the art work to the city.

The art work has been created under the skill training project undertaken by FICCI FLO, a year ago. The series called ‘The Golden Era’ depicts the Maharaja and glimpses of his life and reign.

Smiley, who is an executive member of FICCI FLO, has been pursuing art for the 10 ten years and working with waste is her forte. She has been training 100 girls from Missiondeep, a non-profit organisation, that supports education of girls from poor families. Smiley and her team led by Meeta Mehra, chairperson, FICCI FLO city chapter, presented these murals to DC Gurpreet Singh Khaira.

“These paintings have been made by using waste material including fibre, glass, fabric waste, other plant-based waste. The project work on this has been going on for over year-and-a-half and these paintings will be displayed at the new administration building complex, in line with its heritage inspired architecture,” Smiley said.

Previously also, Smiley has worked on several art projects with FICCI FLO. She mostly works with crude materials such as cement, wood, iron, bamboo, GRC, fibre, wax, glass, paper, ribbon and turning the mundane materials into intangible art.

FLO has been running several mentorship programmes for girls from Missiondeep, imparting skill training as part of providing them employment opportunities.