Visionary Educators: Trilicia Gunawardena at Govt. College of Art & Crafts – Part II

(Part I of this article appeared on 04 June)

by Laleen Jayamanne

A.J. Gunawardena wrote art criticism for The Island newspaper under the pseudonym Jayadeva. In his 1997 (22/6) review of Sarath Chandrajeewa’s third solo exhibition, ‘Art in Pottery’ (sponsored by the Lionel Wendt Gallery and Nihal Fernando of Studio Times), he lays out a framework for thinking about pottery not only as a traditional craft but also as a potential medium of fine art practice. He says that within the art school itself, the very name of the subject area, mati-vada, (work in clay) carries its lowly status as a craft, unlike painting and graphic design. He says that, because of clay’s folk connection to functional objects made in a messy process for everyday use (hali-walan), it didn’t have the status of fine art. In this way he created a framework, explaining the reason for the cultural prejudice, so as to situate the artist’s take on pottery as a medium ready for fine art reinvention. He explores Chandrajeewa’s popular exhibition of terracotta sculpture, objects, functional historical utensils and artefacts and ornaments. He does this as a critic who has followed the artist’s career from his very first exhibition ‘Creations in Terracotta’, in 1990, through to his ‘100 Impressions in Bronze’ show in 1994, to this 1997 third solo exhibition which he reviewed, just a year before his untimely death. He talks about the way Chandrajeewa researched the entire process of making pottery in order to experiment with new techniques of using the clay prepared for making tiles, instead of kiri matti taken from the paddy fields. He used a modified version of the kind of oven used for firing tiles to fire the pots. He experimented with natural earth colours found in the soil and methods of applying them so as to produce unusual colouration through the firing process as well. A.J. then concludes that Chandrajeewa’s terracotta work has matured, reaching powers of abstraction, using the pottery also as a painterly surface evocative of colours in vegetation.

A.J. also shows a keen awareness of how even some of the staff, within the Art School, actively denigrated the study of pottery, within the curriculum, and elevated painting and sculpture over it. This elitist, traditional attitude took on a personal and ugly turn when Chandrajeewa, who was studying for his PhD on Lankan bronze sculpture in Moscow, was given a demeaning nickname by colleagues in Sri Lanka. His detractors (none of whom had doctorates), renamed the PhD by converting it into a derisory joke, ‘Pottery Head Dankotuwa’. Dankotuwa was where Chandrajeewa lived with his wife, illustrator and potter, Janaki Ranmuthugala, and had established a pottery studio, adjascent to their house in 1981, despite some opposition from a relative. It was an area famous for its clean clay, the material essential to the pottery and tile industries of the country. This kind of juvenile name-calling, promulgated through professional jealousy, also adversely affects vulnerable students who are gifted in the craft of pottery. As well, the possibility of developing a craft practice of pottery as a livelihood, which Chandrajeewa inaugurated through his highly successful 1990 and 1997 exhibitions, is undermined by such actions of academics who should know better. This is not just an example of a bad joke though. The joke has serious caste and class implications; traditionally potters belonged to the low-status Kumbal caste in the very hierarchical Sinhala-Buddhist Lankan society. ‘Kumbal’, the Sinhala name of the caste to which potters belonged, derives from the Sanskrit word ‘kumbha’ which means jar. The curriculum Chandrajeewa developed for the Department of Ceramics in 2010, is still followed. Graduating students are now able to join the industry Chandrajeewa helped recreate to an extent after its precipitous decline due to the 1977 free-market reforms which led to the importation of cheap aluminium and plastic utensils.
Ananda Coomaraswamy’s Medieval Sinhalese Art, first published in 1908, opens with an account of the importance of pottery as a craft in Lanka and is worth reading now. In about 10 pages, he describes, in great detail, the craft labour required to make the most humble of daily implements. His sense of respect for the potter’s craft knowledge is remarkable. Academics teaching visual art should encourage students who might want to fashion mati-wada in numerous creative ways. That Barbara Sansoni’s Barefoot shop has been a commercial outlet for some of Ranmuthugala’s work and that the Barefoot Gallery exhibited Chandrajeewa’s retrospective exhibition ‘Path of Visual Arts’ in 2005, which included terracotta, should be an incentive for young critics and, indeed, art historians to write about the ‘art of pottery’ without embarrassment, as an integral part of Lankan visual culture. Much of the primary research for such work is now available in the handy publication ScrapBook of Chandrajeewa – Newspaper and Magazines Collection from 1985-1010, ed. Malsha Fernando (2011). ‘Visual Culture’ is a major area of collection in new global museums, such as M+ in Hong Kong and has been a popular academic area of research in western art history for decades now. The battle to include the study of Visual Culture, within the discipline of Art History (structured on the western cannon), was won easily because its popularity improved student numbers that were rapidly declining.
Chandrajeewa, through his pioneering pottery studio in Dankotuwa, and his very popular terracotta exhibitions, has, in some ways, singlehandedly attempted to do for pottery what Barbara Sansoni did for Lankan handloom weaving. However, evidently cloth and pottery do not have the same status in South Asian culture. Despite his humble origins, Chandrajeewa has had generous and visionary sponsors and patrons like Harold Peiris, Maxi Perera, among several others supporting his talent and ambitions, caring for his well-being. Thanks to the many scholarships and awards earned, he has also been able to train and study at some of the best educational institutions in Europe and Japan as well as study the art in major museums. He plans to write about his Russian teacher of sculpture, the late Professor Lev Kerbel, as a great guru and sculptor, who also treated him like his own son. He is also grateful to his high school art teacher, Mr D. P. J. Jayadeva, of Karawita Central College, who advised him to study visual art at the Government College of Art & Crafts.
The splendid cultural, social and financial capital that the late Barbara Sansoni inherited and commanded with admirable chutzpah as a member of the Lankan (Catholic), Burgher elite is of another world from that of Chandrajeewa. He is the son of a trilingual police officer, brought up in the hill-country by his loving maternal grandparents. His school principal grandfather was Catholic while his grandmother was a Buddhist. He is also a child of Lanka’s proud free education system. It is this profound policy that allowed, one fine day, Professor Rathnayake Mudiyanselage Sarath Chandrajeewa to become the Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies of the University of Visual and Performing Arts. During his tenure in 2016, he nominated Barbara Sansoni to be awarded an honorary doctorate, for her immense contribution to the economic, cultural and scholarly life of Sri Lanka
As I write this on inspiring teachers who care for their students (while also glancing at Coomaraswamy on Lankan pottery in the opening pages of his Medieval Sinhalese Art), a doggerel from my childhood popped into my mind:

Ambalame pina pina
Valan kadak gena gena
Eka Bindapi gona gona
Ekata mata hina hina
In a culture where such a devastating calamity for a poor potter (at least a month’s worth of labour destroyed, as measured in Coomaraswamy’s careful and moving description of the arduous daily routine), is a matter for laughter and clever rhyming, one might wonder if class and caste cruelty is ingrained in us Sinhala folk. It is regrettable that academics who resort to such poisonous word-play in free educational institutions, as if they were their own fiefdoms, revive feudal caste values. During the current peoples’ uprising against authoritarian rule, groups of scholars have called for transformation within the university sector as well. So it feels like a good time to remember some of our long-gone visionary educators with their creative teaching practices, sense of humour and the unwavering duty of care they had for their students. (Concluded)