Tabla Diosphere, tabla pudis, 30″x45″ x30″, 2019
This week we welcome Seema Lisa Pandya, a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist, sustainability consultant and sustainable design professor at New York School of Interior Design and Fashion Institute of Technology. She is inspired by a nature-based aesthetic that can be found in much of her work echoing organic forms and biological fractal divisions. Having spent over a decade and a half as a sustainability consultant in the green architectural field, her artwork is influenced by both architecture and the way nature deals with boundaries.
Tabla Feedback, tabla drum heads, 5′ x 5′ x 5′, 2016
This inquiry has inspired her to create various series of work ranging from public art, interactive kinetic sculptures, light sculptures, amoeba shaped fractal paintings, to a series of biologically inspired forms made from used drumheads. Her work has been featured in Vogue India, Fine Woodworking Magazine and Mood of Living Magazine.
“Studying the classical Indian tabla drums, my teacher proclaimed, ‘matter is vibration and vibration is reality’. My Tabla Sculpture Series utilizes discarded ‘pudi heads’ (leather skins of the South Asian classical tabla drum) as a sculptural material. Each pudi had been touched energetically by musicians for 1000+ hours until the heads become worn out.
Tabla Tapestry 02, tabla drum heads, 15′ x 7′, 2016
When I hear the classical rhythmic patterns of the tabla and the music of my ancestry from India, I experience the sound visually as a curved rhythmical ‘push-pull’ exchange creating balances that are the fundamental building blocks reality. Aesthetically, these round drumheads also resemble biological cells with a dark nucleus in the center that have inspired me weave these rhythmical instrument parts together to represent biological and natural forms.
Amoebic Light Void 01, Hand carved reclaimed wood – oil paint – mixed media – light sculpture. 12″x12″x26″, 2014
My Amoebic Light Void series celebrates the highlighted boundary relationship between negative and positive space with curves that engage in a push-pull balance found in nature. These works express a deep seeded personal belief that reality exists only in the relationships between things, and is not composed actually of ‘things’ in and of themselves.”
