Surya Radhakrishna: Painted Earth

a display of the work made by Jeanne Carreau’s Private Lesson student Surya Radhakrishna

On exhibit in in the Classroom Display May 16 – July 4, 2015

About the Artist: Surya showed a great interest in art, especially drawing and painting, at a very early age. Having been diagnosed with Autism, he has always been able to express himself through his art much more articulately than he could with language. From early on, he had a burning desire to create his own cartoon characters set in surreal backgrounds. He illustrated a book on autism with these figures in it.

Surya was first introduced to clay by Dorine Bosler in Darien High School’s excellent art department, where he learned the basics of handbuilding and throwing on the wheel. He has further developed his artistic skills at Foundation High School where is currently a student, as well as through private painting lessons at Silvermine School of Art. In 2014, he took part in an exhibit at Silvermine, displaying a triptych and two other paintings. He has also had his art displayed in the Darien Public Library and taken part in community art shows in Darien, winning third prize in one.

Surya has been a pottery student of Jeanne Carreau at CAC for the last 4 years. Together they have made functional and decorative pottery and sculpture inspired by Surya’s drawings and paintings, using bas relief, sgraffito, slip trailing, stenciling, and painting with underglazes and stains. Surya’s work reflects his meticulous attention to detail and strong sense of color composition. Because of his innate spatial sense, he is able to transfer the vision of his 2 dimensional drawings directly onto the surface of 3 dimensional objects without the help of a grid.

This detailed yet fluid and fresh drawing style has even benefited Surya’s high school work-study assignment at a bakery in Ansonia, CT. He loves to decorate cakes and cookies, and once for Halloween, he decorated a tray of pumpkin faced cookies, each with its own individual expression! This work, where he is proudly displaying the cookies with Mr. Tidmarsh the baker, has been captured in bright colors on one of the trays Surya has made at CAC (featured in this show).

Surya is eager to take on new challenges and experience art and pottery in new situations. In 2013, while visiting family in India, he went to Pondicherry to see Ray Meeker and Deborah Smith’s Golden Bridge pottery center (through a connection made at CAC). Surya was thrilled to have the opportunity to make something on the wheel in their workshop and to experience working in an open-air classroom, surrounded by fascinating sculptures and nature. He has also created many drawings while visiting art museums and sketching around the streets of New York City which have subsequently become the basis for his pottery. His Empire State Building vase (featured in this show), where the asymmetry captures a unique aspect of his vision of the monument and adds to the piece’s beauty, came out of this experience in New York City.

Surya loves to work in the environment of CAC, where the other potters and their work never fail to inspire him and make him feel a part of this esteemed institution. In his years of learning and working here under Jeanne, Surya has been able to display his pottery along with that of other students in the student exhibitions in the gallery. Many times Surya finds encouragement from those working around him, or others who stop by to admire what he is working on. His happy and eager attitude is reflected in the care he puts into his work, and the way his pottery continually evolves with his interests and experiences while remaining true to his own distinct style. As his family, our hope is that he continues to grow and share his work in this renowned school of pottery.