Now, bidriware flower vase welcomes tourists to Bidar

Source: The Hindu:

The 16-ft cement concrete structure sits at the intersection of the main road with Ladgeri Cross Road

Visitors to Bidar will now be greeted with a set of art works on the Bidar- Hyderabad Road.

A 16-ft Bidriware flower vase, built in cement concrete, sits at the intersection of the main road with Ladgeri Cross Road.

A few metres away on the walls of the railway bridge is a series of paintings featuring the wildlife of Bidar, heritage places and culture.

Two teams of artists have worked on these projects. B.G. Gourishankar, sculptor from Kalaburagi, has worked on the cement Bidriware for two weeks, with a team of five artists. Anil Raj, a Bidar-based artist, and his team completed the paintings.

Installing Bidriware at the junction was the former Deputy Commissioner Anurag Tewari’s idea, said Kishor Joshi, Commissioner, Bidar Urban Development Authority. “As part of tourism promotion, he wanted to showcase Bidar’s culture. This was the first structure we created as an experiment,” he said. “We plan to build more such structures on other roads,” he added.

The flower vase has been completed and is ready for inauguration. Around 250 bags of cement, a tipper load of sand and a mini-truck load of bricks and some iron roads have been used to create the structure.

“We built a wooden platform around the structure in phases as we went up,” Mr. Gourishankar said. Created in Bidriware style, the vase has hand drawn designs on a black surface.

It is built on a platform that rises above the grade separators. Anil Raj and seven other artists began by painting the bridge white. Then they drew pictures of blackbuck and peacocks that are native to the district along with local trees such as cashew and badam. The artists experimented with modern paintings embedded with messages about environment protection on the bigger walls. “We ended up by painting the ceiling as the sky,” he said. They have covered around 5,000 sq ft of space on the walls with paintings. The former Assistant Commissioner Venkat Raja commissioned the project a few weeks ago. It has been completed in around two weeks, the artists said.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/Now-bidriware-flower-vase-welcomes-tourists-to-Bidar/article17015265.ece

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