Is museum glass worth the money
A common question, answered plainly: what UV glass protects, and when ordinary glass is enough.
Kolam and the Margazhi mornings
Why we show kolam drawings every December, and what the patterns at Puducherry’s doorsteps mean.
Walk through Puducherry’s Tamil quarter before 7 am in Margazhi, the month from mid-December to mid-January, and every doorstep has a kolam. Women draw them with rice flour, starting from a grid of dots, in lines that loop and close without a break. By evening, feet and ants have taken most of them away.
The gallery is named after a white wall, and our business is about what is put in front of a wall. A kolam is the same idea in a smaller space: a pattern made for a threshold, renewed each morning, to welcome whoever comes in. We started showing kolam drawings in 2015, when our neighbour Meenakshi Pillai agreed to draw on paper for a month.
The drawings in our December show are made with rice paste on handmade paper, then traced with fine ink so the line stays when the rice dries and falls. Each is made on a single morning. Some are simple dot grids; others, drawn for Pongal, take two hours.
If you visit in Margazhi, walk down Rue Ambur Salai or around the Vaithikuppam streets early, and please step around the kolams rather than over them. Then come to the gallery to see how the same lines look on a white wall.
